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Escher/Thuringian love. show of your rocks

@PaulMallorca “I've seen a few of this small stones over the years. People call them coticules, lately PSDO.”

Those sure have a lot of signs of being PDSO and I don’t think they look anything like thuringian stones to me.

I think you are putting too much stock in your magnifications photos and the similarities of the stone surface you are seeing. I do not believe that is a proper method for identifying or differentiating most stones. For example, if you finish the stone surface with 600w/d of a slate from US, slate from UK, and slate from Germany, you will not have significant difference beyond the original color.

I only have two PSDO and they remind me much more of jnat stones oddly. Just me but that is what they look and feel most similar to. They don’t remind me of thuri in any aspect except the razor edge which I do find similar to thuri.

Anyway, I just think that the magnified inspection of the stone surface is not going to be very definitive or differentiating like you may hope.
 
I have PDSOs (green and the less common yellowish) and thuris, and I agree in that they are quite different stones.

PDSO are mostly unmistakable. The colour make me doubt on the yellow, but nothing else is shaped like those, and the stone feel was consistent.
With cotis and purples, PDSOs is what we find in here. (sud ouest of france).

Thuris cover many quarries, colours, textures, hardness can be fairly variable. But overall have characteristics different than any other stone I've found.

Those two feel and acted like hard thuris. There are no labels to certify anything, and they could be anything else. But comparing to both types of stones, everything points to thurigian, and not PDSO.

A single magnified picture for sure not. But again comparing under magnification the different characteristics of each stone can add to the identification.

At the time I was not as sure. But the day I found the octagonal stone above, it immediately reminded me of my small stones.
 
Well, you likely have more experience with both thuris and PDSO than I do, but the info on the thuringian stones seems more known and clear whereas the PDSO much less so. Unless perhaps you know who mined and sold PDSO and where from? Peter/hatchizo (spelling?) is a phenomenal resource with common visits to the thuri mines directly. He has shown a lot of variations of thuris I have never seen before. I wish more was known on PDSO and where they are from, but I don’t think I recall seeing obvious thuris cut like PDSO, stuffed into irregular paddles, convex etc nor really the same colors. Admittedly I have a very small sampling and you probably have owned and used more of each than I have.
 
Not as many as you may think. I've purchased about 10 of those, keept 3, but seen a few more in meetings or antique shoops. The biggest collection of PDSO I know is own by a forum member in the USA.

PDSO stand for pierre du sud ouest. If I remember correctly it was Antoine that first raised awareness about this stone. He doesn't live far from my place. He has quite a collection of stones. He was our french Tim... The name comes from our area, where the stone is often found.

Someone in the forums found a quarry in nothern Italy that is the most probable source for those. Not 100% confirmed, but if I remember correctly the quary museum collection shows a stone very PDSO like. There was a lot of Italians migrating in to the Sud Ouest of france. My first PDSO (and a coti) was given by a retired Italian barber, but sadly he didn't remember anything about.

At the end of the day, is pretty difficult to point origins. We can classify stones by resemblance, but is still a game of deduction, and we can easilly be wrong. Like vosgiennes!

Thuris are not my speciality. The two above show to me all the characteristics of the reference thuris I have. If someone has better information I'll be happy to be wrong and learn more...

Since those green and gold stones are a thing (I've seen 4 or 5 pictures of those), for a while I secretly hoped there was a forgoten french thuri like hone. Is not impossible. Geology ignores frontiers...
 
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Well, let me at least add a photo so I am contributing more. These are all what I believe to be thuringian hones except the top left two which I believe to be PDSO. They came from the same US member with large PDSO collection I believe you referred to. Always good to give photos for everyone to look at too.

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It would be interesting if they were Italian stone. With the Pyrenees in the SW of France and Italy to the SE, they should be PDSE (pierre du sud est) then :) I’ve always wondered where in the Pyrenees they may have come from just thinking sud oest, but maybe that name has been wholly misleading and they are really SE.

Mine are nice and fine stones as are my thuringian stones, but all other characteristics seems different. Again, only having two PDSO limits my experience.

Good to hear all your info and thoughts on them.
 
Need to learn how to use it,as never used one, certainly going to be testing this rock
Any helpful comments welcome
She is flat and extremely smooth
Im jealous as there are some beautiful rocks in this thread [emoji3]
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Ha! Having spoken the other day about never finding Thuris in Britain... Yesterday I found a 7 x 1.5 inch stone in the wild for pennies. After cleaning the caked oil off (welcome to Britain) I find it's a dual tone dark green-grey-black!
Photos to follow.
 

timwcic

"Look what I found"
Ha! Having spoken the other day about never finding Thuris in Britain... Yesterday I found a 7 x 1.5 inch stone in the wild for pennies. After cleaning the caked oil off (welcome to Britain) I find it's a dual tone dark green-grey-black!
Photos to follow.


NICE!!!
 
Don't know the name, but it's a good one. A few others here have said that their best stones are from it. I've had a few and only got rid of them because all mine were little.
 

Legion

Staff member
Picked up another German to match my JGES that I found a couple of months back. Seems like the same type of stone, but the slurry was a lot darker when I lapped it, almost black.

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