Hey All.
Up to this point I have been using either a granite surface plate with 60/100/150/220 sand paper. Or a King 1000/6000 waterstone followed by a strop with some green rouge for my sharpening needs. But I stumbled on to this stash of stones at an estate sale for $10 bucks. They've been sitting in the box they came in since I got them. But today I finally set out out clean them up. I broke out my camp stove and set out to boil them. I put em on wood chopsticks to keep em off the bottom of the pot. Initially I added some simple green . Not much happened. Then I added a packet of the dishwasher soap. That instantly brought the oil up. After that I set out to flatten them up. Was a bit like christmas as they were all so dark I couldn't see much of what they were.
Hoping someone might help ID some of these. But Mostly the one I believe could be a Washita Though its not quite like most I've seen.. Mine seems a bit more blotchy than most i've seen online. So maybe its not Washita. I have begun flattening it and its almost there. It seems very soft compared to the other stones. Though I believe the others to be all man made.
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Here are the others All appear to be exceedingly harder than the one above. It( the possible Washita )flattened nicely on a granite plate and some 60grit sand paper. The others all blow out the paper before much of them get flattened. the one at top is 1/2 coarse one side and finer on the other. Both dark grey. the middle is pink orange through out( seems similar to the pink/orange part on gthenorton thats at bottom). .. fine and hard as noted . Lastly the norton 1/2 pink orange fine, 1/2 grey and coarse.
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Finally here is a mess of smaller stones some of which I'll shape into slips or use for pocket knife etc.
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Don't know how I'll used these. the Washita will be fun to try out. The large man made ones seem daunting to try and flatten. and I don't know where they'd fit in to my current regime.
Thanks for any help in sorting through these, in advance.
Joel.