Another mystery hone. Sort of.

[SliceOfLife]

Ok. Four years ago or so, I had this barbers cut (5x3 If memory serves) hone that I thought might be a thuri, but after testing, decided it wasn't. I didn't like it as well as thuri's and eventually sold it. Later I found some matching hones online that let me Identify what the hone was. I think it turned out that it was a La Lune, but it's been so long I can't recall.

Anyway, I bought a mystery hone, it arrived today, and it's that kind of rock again (this time 6.5x1.25"). Essentially it feels somewhere between a slate and an arkansas, weighs a bit more than an equal sized thuri would, and has a somewhat regular streaking pattern in blacks and dark blues that gives it a sort of 3-d effect appearance. It also has a lot of glittering on the surface. Now I'm trying to remember if it was a La Lune or some other hone.

Anyway, here's the pictures.

 

[ACorazza]

Can u post a picture of the slurry it makes, and does it have any smell to it.

 

[SliceOfLife]

Slurry is basically what I'm used to getting from blue/grey thuri's. Mostly grey with a hint of purple, thick. Smells like... well slurry. A bit of clay a bit of salt.

 

[Gamma]

Could be one of the stones from the Vosges region I suppose.

 

[Alum of Potash]

I've got a Vosgian stone (a.k.a. brown "Thuringian"), and it's, well, browner than what's shown above, with very rare turquoise-colored spotting. A very hard stone too, used with oil. No one knows where the Special/La Lune stones are from, but they are on the purple side. Specials tend to be oblong and La Lunes tend not to be.

 

[Brooksie967]

La Lunes are definitely more purple than that and can be used with oil. BUT, I believe it COULD be a 'special stone only for razors' that does have the same face of a man as the la lune hones but not called la lune.

On the 'other forum' there are quite a few threads that have wonderful pictures and videos of the stone which might be better use to you to compare it to.

For someone with such nice razor stuff you really should invest in a better camera, your pictures are horrible again lol.

 

[Gamma]

There are several branded hones that are alledged to originate from the Vosges region, at least 3 IIRC. I would also think there were others that weren't 'branded'.

 

[Alum of Potash]

My wife is from the Vosges mountains, and we spend a lot of time there. So I would love to know of some and the source locales. I know of the "brown Thuringian," which works great as a touch-up finisher with 5 passes or so, and some have claimed that the Specials and La Lunes might have come from there, but no one knows really, not even on the French forums. Apart from these, there is a prevalent low-grit sand stone that is too rough for razors, more for garden tools.

 

[SliceOfLife]

It is an oilstone by the by. I picked it up (wrapped in paper):

Thought: Wow, heavy for a thuri.

Unwrapped it and Thought: Very weird cut for a black arkansas.

Lapped it and recognized it as the same stone as I'd had in the past. That one must have been NOS though, as it still had the original scars from cutting and showed no signs of oil at all. This one was lapped on all sides before being completely covered in a thin coat of jet black oil buildup. (I lapped the one surface and left the others).


As for the pics. It's not the tool, it's the artist.

 

[Alum of Potash]

La Lunes had some pretty coarse, tell-tale sides and were a bit purple. From what I can tell from these pix, the sides are smoother and the coloration is more towards carbon black.

Edit: I agree with Brooksie about the Specials in hindsight. More neutral in tonality; and in this regard, smoother on the sides. And oblong. Is this a Special? I have my doubts, but surface of that second shot from the top is most curious indeed.

 

[SliceOfLife]

Sides are completely smoothed. It was lapped on all 6(edit: 4) sides at some point in its life with an ~60-100 grit abrasive.
edit: Correction the original finish appears to exist on the smallest two sides. Similar to what I've seen on dark/harder eschers, looks like they were ground flat on a very coarse grinding wheel (the way Escher did to apply their side labels), so I imagine this stone may well have had side labels at some point. But it's definitely not an Escher. Peculiar.

Honed a few times to play with it.
On slurry/water, just what I remembered, a bit below thuri performance. Feels VERY grainy on slurry, but gives a better finish than I'd expect from the feel.

On oil, degraded an ark edge substantially with a 220grit finish. I polished it on my charn (it's softer than my softest charnley by the way, though not by much) I'll probably try it on oil again tomorrow night and see if that made any difference.

Density is much closer to novaculites than thuri's. It's definitely some sort of slate, though.


Edit:
Polishing it definitely did help. I'd still say it's a good step below a nice ark as an oilstone, but maybe some more break-in will change that. In any case I suppose I'll shave off it tomorrow and see how the edge feels.

 

[SliceOfLife]

Reporting back from the shave.

Very comfortable. I'd say similar to a coticule finish in aggressiveness. Sharpness*? Well a bit below thuringian to perhaps low end thuringian levels I'd say.


* How I measure sharpness in a shave is based on my throat. (I have another method for more finite measuring in shaving, but it's irrelevant to this discussion). My beard grows in 6+ directions on my throat. Every pass after my second does two things. First it closes the angle between my shaving patterns and 180degree's (ATG passes) of some of these directions. Second, it performs an ATG (or as close as I can get to one) for one of these directions. So basically if a razor gets me perfectly smooth in 1 pass, it can shave perfectly smooth WTG. If it does it in two, it can shave perfectly smooth in pretty much any XTG angle beyond about 10-15 degrees off WTG. If it does it in 3-4, it can shave perfectly smooth in pretty much a standard (~45 or ~90degree) XTG), if it takes 5-6, it pretty much requires ATG to get perfect smooth shaves.

I've shaved off <0.5micron grit synth and what I believe to be even more refined Jnat edges. These are 2 pass shavers. Thuri's are a solid 3-4 pass shaver. Coti's are an X or 6+ passer (never get me absolutely BBS, but get very close at 5 passes or a decent shave in 3, usually not worth going for a 6th). This stone on oil would be a 5 pass shaver, maybe a 4 with a bit more work, but I doubt it. It's a 5, but about as comfortable and easy to use as a coti finish, so it's an interesting stone. Won't be replacing my Jnats any time soon, but I'll use it a bit more and see if I like it enough to keep.

I'm sure I'll have to try it out shaving off water soon enough, too.

 

[Doorsch]

For my point of view again a candidate for a Silkstone...

 

[SliceOfLife]

On second thought you may well be right. The results on oil seem to be pretty consistent with what I'm finding reported on silkstones. I never did try oil on them in the past. The grittiness on slurry is puzzling though.

 

[Gamma]

I don't know of any solid identifiers for a Silkstone, Neil Miller probably does though.

You said it was oily, can you tell if the oil is 'on' the stone, or 'in' the stone?
That sounds weird, read it I don't know how else to ask what I mean.
I had a slate oilstone that seemed to me to have oil 'in' it. Sorta like it was it oily by nature, not from use.
Was supposed to have been a Welsh stone of some sort. Never enjoyed it much though.

 

[SliceOfLife]

It was on it, didn't have to lap it much at all to remove it. In fact, it's so thin that if I wet the stone on unlapped sides, I can see the markings through the oil. It just looks black dry.

 

[Brooksie967]

Yeah the only way I could pick out a silkstone is is with a picture of a box beside it saying that its one.

 

[Doorsch]

I don't know of any solid identifiers for a Silkstone, Neil Miller probably does though.

You said it was oily, can you tell if the oil is 'on' the stone, or 'in' the stone?
That sounds weird, read it I don't know how else to ask what I mean.
I had a slate oilstone that seemed to me to have oil 'in' it. Sorta like it was it oily by nature, not from use.
Was supposed to have been a Welsh stone of some sort. Never enjoyed it much though.

Yes there are some identifiers on my point of view...

1. the stone looks like black, if it is wet it seems like it has some fine layers in it..."like silk"...its like reflecting in the stone or under the water surface

2. the stone itself seems to give a feedback when honing...my description is like you have a little resistence...

3. the lowered sides of the hone (not the four ends) i mean the 1-3mm on the honing area which are lowered (if the stone has them) are rough cutted ...see pictures of mine...

 

[SliceOfLife]

The chamfers, you mean.

This stone wasn't really chamfered at all, sadly, so can't go by that.

It does give quite a bit of feedback while honing. More than a slate typically does, certainly.

As for 1. The stones patterning is visible when dry, it only looked black when dry before I cleaned the oil off the surface. But the patterning is definitely more evident when wet (this is true with every stone), and the patterning does appear to be a few mm under the surface (what I called the 3-d effect) because of some optical illusion.


Thanks for all the help, all.

 

[Doorsch]

Some with slurry and whet: