Another mystery hone

[gumbo]

I am guessing this is a green slate - but I have no idea. When I bought it, it looked like this


Now, after a good lapping to remove the chip, and a nice cleaning, it looks like this:


it is a nice green stone (slate?) - pretty fine. It slurries light green. Has some whiteish milky pattern through the light green, with other cloudy dark green lines.
I don't think it's novaculite. It looks silica-ish to me. It's about 5.5 x 1.75 inches and an inch thick. Pretty heavy for it's size and quite hard.
Haven't tried it on a razor yet. I'll try it out and post in the morning.
Any thoughts or similar stones in your possession?
Thanks

 

[smalltank]

Thuri maybe?

 

[gumbo]

I don't think so, it's got way too much "going on" to be a Thuri, but I don't know, maybe there are Thuringian stones that have more color variation than I'm used to.
To the touch, however, it does feel similar.
I ran an already shave ready blade across it for 30 x strokes and the blade was still shave ready with a mirror bevel. It's definitely for razors. I just have no idea what it is.

 

[smalltank]

ask Gamma..he might know...

 

[Gamma]

Looks cool but I have no idea.

 

[gumbo]

I took a razor that was already shave ready and ran it for 30 x strokes this morning, just to have a look at the scratch pattern. It is a very fine, very hard hone now that I've had a chance to experiment with it. Harder than a Thuri. Not as hard as a CF. It did not degrade the edge, and mirrored the bevel nicely. I'm guessing that this is a Grecian hone or a Lyn Idwal.

 

[Gamma]

Can't say about whether or not it's a Grecian hone but I would guess that it's not a Llyn Idwal.

 

[gumbo]

Can you say why you don't think LI Keith?
I was doing some research on SRP and Frameback had a stone that was believed to be LI that looked very similar. Apparently adrspach had visited the quarry and had seen minty green stones with blue speckles off-white flow patterns there. The patterns do look nearly identical, and the qualities (fine finisher, hard, slow) seem to line up as well.
Here is his stone that he believed to be LI.



I shaved off the stone this morning and got a great shave with a TI Spartacus that had previously been pulling. I did a lot of x strokes though, probably close to 40-60 before it would pass HHT, 2 off the stone, 4 after stropping, again a mirror bevel. Felt very smooth with almost no burn with alum and bay rum. It feels like silk to hone on. I haven't tried it with slurry yet.

 

[ADRSPACH]

You mentioned my nick and only thing I can say that in my opinion it does appear to look and behave like LI.

 

[Gamma]

I was actually thinking about this today. .

Llyn Ids are Novaculite, which fractures conchoidally - your stone has a fracture that is scooped and similar but not entirely identical to those I've seen on other novaculite stones including several Llyn Id's.
Now - what I didn't think of before I typed my first response was that your stone could be novaculite stone, and that fracture may have been induced some way other than impact (striking the stone causes the conchoidal thing).
I have seen slates with fractures similar to the one in your stone though, but it's hard to say without touching it to be honest.

Patterns and look are certainly one way to start the ID process but there's more to it than that. Llyn Id was a stone from a particular place - and there are many stones out there that can look similar to one - including a Charnley. Without provenance or some other type of reliable information as to the stone's origin - one can only guess.

I guess my small point is that calling it a Llyn Idwal without knowing for sure where it came from, well - it's like AJ and his slate hones on the bay.
Calling a purple rock a Llyn Melly because it's purple isn't quite right and neither is calling a black slate from Wales a Thuringian; similarly - a slate hone came from Germany is not necessarily a Thuringian either. The stones in question may work for their intended purpose, but only stones mined in Thuringia Germany should be called Thuringians.
The names of these hones are important for history's sake. If we respect that, then we can share information, as well as buy/sell/trade hones with confidence.

 

[life2short1971]

I'm inclined to believe Llyn Idwall also because of the specks of black and all other signs too but without holding the hone I could not be sure and even then I could still be wrong as it it not the typical stone.

 

[gumbo]

Thanks Keith. Your post is really helpful and forced me to look up "conchoidal"
I agree that we have to be careful about labeling stones without a true provenance. I do still think its fun to take shots of inquiry, however.
And while I do think we need to proceed with caution, I also think it is possible to make informed hypotheses that are in good faith about a stone and its origin when certain variables are met with congruence to previously "truly" confirmed stones. Sometimes this is easier than others, as with coticules and more clear-cut variants of certain European hones like tams. For collection's sake, I see no harm in this tentative labeling game. When it comes to selling the stones, of course I agree it is a different story. In those cases, it is inappropriate to sell unlabeled hones without the caveats associated with having no documentation, and it is best to avoid calling the stone by any particular name all together. Of course for some stones these days there are likely a few counterfeits even when documentation is provided! Provenance and seller history, in those cases, trumps even the label IMHO.

 

[gumbo]

Here are a couple additional pictures under better, whiter lighting. It is a very nice looking stone.

 

[Gamma]

And informed hypothesis is the best we can come up quite often.
The funny part of all of it is that there's so much variation amongst the stones that even if you know it is a real Llyn Id it can perform somewhat differently in comparison to another known example.