One of my favourite finishing stones, both because of how good it is, and because it's quite pretty, is a mysterious aqua coloured slate I picked up in the UK last year. There are some aspects of it that are similar to Glanrafon stone, while others including appearance are different. Nevertheless I suspect the stone is Welsh - if it's not a type of Glanrafon then probably quarried quite nearby.
And on arriving back home to Aus the other day I noticed something else interesting about it... I already had one. The previous stone was an Aus ebay purchase in the middle of last year, and though the cool wavy line patterns on the surface aren't quite as pronounced it's almost certainly the same thing, to my eye anyway.
So later I thought I'd have a look at them under a scope to confirm, along with a known Glanrafon, to see if there are any notable differences at a very fine level.
Top to bottom; AusBay stone, UKBay stone, Glanrafon:
I'm just using an inexpensive USB scope here, with digital magnification up to 600x. It's not perfect, but will give good idea especially when compared in the same light, at the same magnification against an already id-ed stone. Having lots of things to compare is good, so I'm also going to snap shots of a load of other mostly green stones at the same time (the pic below is dry, so the stones look a little less green). Excluding the novaculites all of these stones have been finished at 1200 WnD.
Top; Glanrafon, UKbay, AusBay, Mystery Purple n Green Slate, Moughton, Green Thuri, Green Thuri, Charnley, Charnley.
Bottom; Mystery Green-Grey Stone, Grecian, Idwal, Gwespyr, Turkish, Chinese slate.
Will post the results later, I shan't bore people with pictures of all of them, just any that are particularly notable...
And on arriving back home to Aus the other day I noticed something else interesting about it... I already had one. The previous stone was an Aus ebay purchase in the middle of last year, and though the cool wavy line patterns on the surface aren't quite as pronounced it's almost certainly the same thing, to my eye anyway.
So later I thought I'd have a look at them under a scope to confirm, along with a known Glanrafon, to see if there are any notable differences at a very fine level.
Top to bottom; AusBay stone, UKBay stone, Glanrafon:
I'm just using an inexpensive USB scope here, with digital magnification up to 600x. It's not perfect, but will give good idea especially when compared in the same light, at the same magnification against an already id-ed stone. Having lots of things to compare is good, so I'm also going to snap shots of a load of other mostly green stones at the same time (the pic below is dry, so the stones look a little less green). Excluding the novaculites all of these stones have been finished at 1200 WnD.
Top; Glanrafon, UKbay, AusBay, Mystery Purple n Green Slate, Moughton, Green Thuri, Green Thuri, Charnley, Charnley.
Bottom; Mystery Green-Grey Stone, Grecian, Idwal, Gwespyr, Turkish, Chinese slate.
Will post the results later, I shan't bore people with pictures of all of them, just any that are particularly notable...