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- #21
ylekot
On the lookout for a purse
It is soaking in a 50/50 mix of Greased Lightning and water in a pickle jar. We shall revisit tomorrow and see what happens. The solution is filthy already!
I got the synth surprise 2x last week but I'm actually really happy about one and I can always use another flat SiC stone for lapping naturals and eating the crazy mutant steels that everything is made of now.Ah just one day in degreaser and then scrub clean will be grand.
I was looking at the pics on my phone before, but now on a computer... it looks like a synthetic stone to me tbh. Is it different grits on either side...?
I noticed in one picture it looks to be bonded together down one side. I cannot reproduce that line in person but it stands out in that one picture. The grit seems to me to be the same on all sides.
It might be. I've ended up with weird stuff.If you handed me the stone that I have I'd think it was fine grained granite. it is heavy for it's size in my opinion, but I am certainly not one to determine that.
The box it goes in is super tight and is actually reasonably clean.Edge and end pics look more like a fine Carborundum stone. I bough a nice, boxed stone last week for a couple dollars thinking it was a natural, after cleaning, it is a fine grit India stone.
Carborundum and India stones were prized by carpenters in the Pre waterstone days, because they cut steel quickly and were capable of producing a fine woodworking edge. They are fragile so a wood box absorbed a lot of damage.
You can clean wood boxes easily with any good pumice hand cleaner and a stiff brush, I use a cut down chip brush to scrub. Once all the swarf is removed with a Mineral spirit scrub and paper towel. Let the hand cleaner sit on the finish for 15-20 minutes and wipe down with a damp paper towel to minimize wetting. May take a few cycles to clean up well. I have used that trick on wooden boces and folding rulers and makes them look like new after a wipe with thinned linseed oil.
Many of those boxes were made to fit tight to the stone with no room for wood movement. With seasonal movement all the pressure is transferred to the short grain end pieces where they crack.
Now that it has dried it is tan in color, found some sunlight and took a few more pictures
It was ugly dirty and oil soaked to the point that it is still seeping some oil out in spots. My degreaser solution looked like coffee when I dumped it out. I am sure I could get another batch os solution to light tea colored with no problem still. It ain't "clean"I revise my previous statement in that picture on its side from the chunks missing to the pattern on the stone id say washita, boy howdy was it dirty. It's probably a great stone if it was that oil soaked.
It could be one of those old soft arks that are hard to find now. Kinda like my pikes soft arkansas.Haha... well there goes my earlier assertion that it'd be easy to tell once cleaned up!
Are you in the US? In which case - it's almost certainly an Arkansas stone of some kind - at a guess probably a soft ark. Possibly an old Washita, but the surface doesn't quite look like one to me. And the break at the end doesn't either.
Some of the grey pictures do make it look like SiC, but the dry, tan colour and particularly (as @Empire straights said) some of the chipping and end shots are pretty clearly a natural stone. Plus SiC stones don't tend to feel particularly smooth, nor are they very heavy, whereas arks are both of those things.
Try shining a torch or phone light through it at the edge. Every Washita I've ever had has some degree of translucency, even if the light only goes down a couple of mms, and I assume soft arks will too. I don't think any synthetic stones do at all.
So yeah - very likely an arkansas of some variety I'd have thought .
Oil could come out of that thing for a year and still not all be out. I've got some I don't think will ever be completely clean.It was ugly dirty and oil soaked to the point that it is still seeping some oil out in spots. My degreaser solution looked like coffee when I dumped it out. I am sure I could get another batch os solution to light tea colored with no problem still. It ain't "clean"