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Genuine Deerlick Water Hone

Here's a unique razor hone with luckily just enough label left to ID. This is the label to start, barely anything legible:
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All I could really make out was red and a rectangular box around the outside. I decided to just seal it anyways with my spray acrylic so I could use it and dang if while spraying the label details started to pop right out. I instantly saw a deer! Then Genuine Water Hone and Directions.

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After seeing all these details it didn't take much googling to find a couple reference labels.

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Lapping is strong yellow pale green that smells identical to a thuringian:
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Here is the stone cleaned up and next to my recent two tone Escher for reference

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Fine lines on side barely visible and really frustrating to photograph:
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Stone is the about 7"x1.5" or 175x36x17mm and 2.87sg. As the label promised this is a killer water hone and the edge was perfect. Indistinguishable from my other thuringians in use. Maybe the slurry is a bit grittier/faster feeling but it is hard to tell. Honed and shaved with my Puma razor that struggled recently on my new WoA. Thick slurry to clean water. Absolute breeze to hone on and shave with.

If i didnt have the label I would surely be calling this a brown-yellow thuringian like hone based on honing feel, slurry, shave and bevel appearance. The fine lines on the side are unique though and the darker blobs could be stains or inherent it is hard to tell. I had to lap a small mid dip out and it seemed to take quite long for how muddy it was. I got pretty lucky the acrylic spray helped me read the label briefly, now that the spray has dried it is harder to see. Pretty cool to get an American Water Hone that performs as well as those foreign imports!
 
I have one of the two in your reference pictures (the smaller one) and have a lot of the same conclusion you have had! Mine has an SG of around 3 which is very high, and it has a lot of characteristics that are reminiscent of a Thuringian. The smell of both are similar, but still different. The Deerlick is a little more "dirt" smelling while keeping the sweetness to it. Hard to explain!

Performance tends to be similar to, I find the Deerlick glasses a little faster and cuts a little slower but they feel more similar than say a PDSO and Thurigians - so damn close.

I believe these Water Hones were sold in the company's earlier days when they were out of Sulphur Springs rather than Chagrin Falls. Based on how the company is labelled on it, they are most likely stones between 1886 and 1898 before it incorporated as the Deerlick Oilstone Company. Where exactly they are from in Ohio has been difficult to pin down, but given it was before their name change I think it is likely these are maybe a limited operation around the original Deerlick Creek (Sulphur Springs Crawford County) area where as their more common "oilstone" variety is from the Cuyahoga mine.

Ohio has a lot of different geological compositions, with the Ohio Bluestone coming from the Devonian strip. It seems the Deerlicks are usually pulled from different areas, and often lean towards finer and denser. As always though this could be a simple mix of different layers of unique specific events.

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If we take a close up macro shot of the Water Hone, it starts to share more visual similarities with other fine grained sandstones than some of the slate-like Thuringians. There are specific grains visible and the structure of it is actually different (link to picture for higher resolution than B&B allows: https://naturalwhetstones.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/DSCF6674.png)

Of course, the high SG numbers make its composition even a little more confusing given its macro visual appearance.

Good chance it is some in-between category of stone. They do make fantastic water hones though, nice score! I wish mine was larger.

I will post some pictures to the thread when I get a chance!
 
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I have one of the two in your reference pictures (the smaller one) and have a lot of the same conclusion you have had! Mine has an SG of around 3 which is very high, and it has a lot of characteristics that are reminiscent of a Thuringian. The smell of both are similar, but still different. The Deerlick is a little more "dirt" smelling while keeping the sweetness to it. Hard to explain!

Performance tends to be similar to, I find the Deerlick glasses a little faster and cuts a little slower but they feel more similar than say a PDSO and Thurigians - so damn close.

I believe these Water Hones were sold in the company's earlier days when they were out of Sulphur Springs rather than Chagrin Falls. Based on how the company is labelled on it, they are most likely stones between 1886 and 1898 before it incorporated as the Deerlick Oilstone Company. Where exactly they are from in Ohio has been difficult to pin down, but given it was before their name change I think it is likely these are maybe a limited operation around the original Deerlick Creek (Sulphur Springs Crawford County) area where as their more common "oilstone" variety is from the Cuyahoga mine.

Ohio has a lot of different geological compositions, with the Ohio Bluestone coming from the Devonian strip. It seems the Deerlicks are usually pulled from different areas, and often lean towards finer and denser. As always though this could be a simple mix of different layers of unique specific events.

View attachment 1654516

If we take a close up macro shot of the Water Hone, it starts to share more visual similarities with other fine grained sandstones than some of the slate-like Thuringians. There are specific grains visible and the structure of it is actually different (link to picture for higher resolution than B&B allows: https://naturalwhetstones.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/DSCF6674.png)

Of course, the high SG numbers make its composition even a little more confusing given its macro visual appearance.

Good chance it is some in-between category of stone. They do make fantastic water hones though, nice score! I wish mine was larger.

I will post some pictures to the thread when I get a chance!

Awesome information 👏 I figured you might know alot more about this stone but wasn't sure. I think you are correct in it being a bit harder/different than a Thuringian, I can not scratch mine with my fingernail like a thuri easily does and it was harder to lap. So it likely will slow down a bit after a while, but with my 1 knife and 1 razor hone sample size, it was just perfect! Absolutely fantastic razor hone that compares favorably with Thuringians in ease of use and shave. I'm shocked there aren't more people gushing about them, I guess these stones must of either been limited in production, old, or just easily lost into the dirty brown stone pile of history.

I will try to take some better photos of mine at some point too and plan to inspect the surface under magnification. Your stone was kept alot cleaner than mine was, mine led a rougher life likely thrown in with oilstones for some time. I only was able to clean mine partially because of the label which might account for the blotches. I think it was a bit lighter in color yesterday also when first cleaned.
 
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