If imagine whatever it is, it's sharp and very hard. Id love to know what it is and id also love to find a labelled Rosy red in the wild, for purely scientific purposes of course. The pink/purple ones I've had that were very fast and friable I've broken half and they've been relinquished for grinding/ slurries, but the harder of the two are still going strong and in frequent use. They generally go where I go, someone always needs something sharpened(I should charge them).
Arkansas Love...Let's see those Arks!
- Thread starter David
- Start date
American troops have been issued arks for a very long time with their kabar knives. I don't know how long kabar knives have been around but I'm sure arks have been issued since quarries were secured. I don't have any military stones but I'd like to come across some.
Actually, thinking about it, that makes a lot of sense. Back in the 50's there was a definite preference for the British military to award contracts to British companies. While economically it would make sense for the cooks to use India stones, Norton is American owned, even though they had a UK factory. If you were wanting to purchase a boatload of sharpening stones from a UK company in 1953, there wouldn't have been a huge number of choices. That medical supply place was probably just the place who put in the lowest quote.
The closest I have is a Vietnam Era air crew survival knife. It just has a coarse SIC stone in the sheath.
Yeah it was the font we thought looked more mid c.20th on that one.
Ha indeed! Knowing the British government and military... the contract was probably a gentleman's agreement made on the playing fields of Eton sometime in the far distant past. And to last a thousand years!
In my mind, out in Afghanistan and Iraq, the baffled squaddies of today are still opening boxes full of Tams, surgical hacksaws, phrenology calipers, leech aquariums and the like.
Perhaps, though Norton did have a full blown subsidiary company in the UK, rather than just a factory. So surely more to do with the inherent superiority of a true British product, like the Celebrated Tam O'Shanter Hone, in comparison what was available in the colonies.
I prefer my explanation above.
Indeed. The Scottish lord who owned the land with the TOS mine on it was probably a MP.
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Beautiful stones guys! Cotedupy , I think that NH Inc stone is one of the most colorful I've ever seen! Love it!
Ah yes... Bufton-Tufton. I went to prep school with his great-grandson.
(That's barely a joke btw. I did go to school with the son of Sir Geoffey Clifton-Brown, Conservative member for the Cotswolds, and partial inspiration for the Private Eye's 'Bufton Tufton MP').
Ha. Sounds like you went to a much better school than me.
Cool isn't it... you can guess why I bought it! Happily it turned out be a great stone too (for knives anyway, it probably isn't much cop for razors).
Been wanting to take a photo outside in bright natural light to capture colors of my absolute favorite stones I own. They are something special to me. I read about the reverence some have for Japanese stones, which do not have the same mystique for me, but that is how I feel about this set.
The phone wants to enhance everything, so I have tried to adjust the photo to show the true colors. Interestingly, the really bright light shows subtle swirls and clouds in the translucent and black, which are not obvious with indoor lighting.
After working with these a fair amount, the translucent is a step beyond the black for fineness, even working on polishing both.
Dan’s Arkansas Whetstones, 10”x3”x1”
Top to bottom, fine to coarse:
Translucent
Black
Hard- this has subtle pink mixed in, which does not show well in the photo, but is very pretty.
Soft
Washita, this stone is noticeably softer and less dense than the soft Ark.
The phone wants to enhance everything, so I have tried to adjust the photo to show the true colors. Interestingly, the really bright light shows subtle swirls and clouds in the translucent and black, which are not obvious with indoor lighting.
After working with these a fair amount, the translucent is a step beyond the black for fineness, even working on polishing both.
Dan’s Arkansas Whetstones, 10”x3”x1”
Top to bottom, fine to coarse:
Translucent
Black
Hard- this has subtle pink mixed in, which does not show well in the photo, but is very pretty.
Soft
Washita, this stone is noticeably softer and less dense than the soft Ark.
Nice set
I'm going to get them to cut me one of those washitas at some point. I talked to Kim about it a few months ago. I'm glad to hear someone bought one and like it. I've read they are very very soft.
Yes, it and the other Washitas I own including an old Pike are very soft compared to Dan’s soft Arks or the old Smith’s or old Norton soft Arks.
I recently bought a current vintage Norton soft Ark and it is pretty darned soft too. If there were no labels, my current Norton soft Ark would be indistinguishable from my old Pike Lily White.
I recently bought a current vintage Norton soft Ark and it is pretty darned soft too. If there were no labels, my current Norton soft Ark would be indistinguishable from my old Pike Lily White.
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This is interesting... the only Norton soft I have is an old 30s/40s one, and it is indeed - hard. With an SG around 2.55. Modern Norton softs aren't like that then?
The dividing line between Soft Arkansas stones, and 'real' Washitas is a lot more blurry than many people seem to think (imo). I suspect that the entire idea of a 'Soft Arkansas' stone was a Pike invention sometime in the mid to late 1890s. I don't think I've seen reference to them before then.
My vintage Washitas seem a lot harder than my more modern softs.
Ditto. None of mine are as friable as the modern colourful softs. Even stones with pretty much the same SGs - the old Washitas are noticeably harder.
(What TN said above in that regard surprised me somewhat.)
I have one off the early pike soft arks and it's pretty much a no.1 with black specks. It's hard. I have a smith's hard ark from the 80s and they're probably close to equal sg.
