Mystery hones... Let's see what you have

[cotedupy]

It has the heavy chamfers of the French hones

That definitely looks like a French stone chamfer though

Anybody fancy having a guess now it is all cleaned up...? French stones (and purple stones generally too) are a bit of a blind spot for me in terms of distinguishing features, apart from I know they can all look pretty similar.

I can't see any green in it, and it's not the finest stone in the world - I don't think it would finish a razor. These pics are wet.

And while we're at it, here's a smaller slate hone with chamfered sides I just cleaned up. The last pic shows it on the right next to a Thuri on the left. Visually they're extremely similar, but I don't think it is a Thuri - it's not quite as fine, but could still probably be used to finish fairly well.

 

[ErieSurfer]

Y'all remember the teardrop-shaped pumice stones, right? Well, there I was trundling about the internet, shopping for my next stone, when I came across these SRD hone directions. Read the very last sentence on the page.

Does anyone know or have a guess as to what the SRD hones were made of?

 

[Pack line]

Been a couple weeks of lapping 20 minutes here and 20 minutes there but finally got some stones cleaned up. Fairly certain the big one is a hindo. The one next to it should also be a hindo but they are quite different. The beauty of natural stones. Big one lapped easy on SiC the one next to it was harder to lap then the arks....they also feel different under a blade. Still shedding oil too but they were both black when i got them.

 

[Legion]

Been a couple weeks of lapping 20 minutes here and 20 minutes there but finally got some stones cleaned up. Fairly certain the big one is a hindo. The one next to it should also be a hindo but they are quite different. The beauty of natural stones. Big one lapped easy on SiC the one next to it was harder to lap then the arks....they also feel different under a blade. Still shedding oil too but they were both black when i got them.

My Hindo looks like the smaller one, and I recall it being quite hard to lap as well.

 

[Jalapa]

What's this strop-hone? Stone is about 3mm thick.

 

[cotedupy]

What's this strop-hone? Stone is about 3mm thick.

Likely to be either a dark mottled Thuri, or Schwedenstein.

 

[alex1921]

Are the kanji on jnats an indication of provenance/quality/other?

Eg., would they tell you enough about a stone to take a punt on it?

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Sometimes yes and sometimes no
This one, based on size and looks, yeah it would be worth a bid if the price is right.

 

[Wid]

Got this stone in today from the UK. It’s not a particularly hard stone, lapped pretty easy. Seems porous as it doesn’t retain water on the surface very long. Measured the sg and it came in at 2.8 which to me is odd that it’s still pretty porous.

The one side is rather rudely cut. It’s soaking in some cleaner right now, feels like it was used with oil.

 

[Legion]

Got this stone in today from the UK. It’s not a particularly hard stone, lapped pretty easy. Seems porous as it doesn’t retain water on the surface very long. Measured the sg and it came in at 2.8 which to me is odd that it’s still pretty porous.

The one side is rather rudely cut. It’s soaking in some cleaner right now, feels like it was used with oil.

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Some sort of Welsh slate I'd guess, but it will be hard to be more precise than that.

 

[ErieSurfer]

Got this stone in today from the UK. It’s not a particularly hard stone, lapped pretty easy. Seems porous as it doesn’t retain water on the surface very long. Measured the sg and it came in at 2.8 which to me is odd that it’s still pretty porous.

The one side is rather rudely cut. It’s soaking in some cleaner right now, feels like it was used with oil.

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That stone certainly has some personality to it. The first photo makes it look like there is a dividing line between purple and green sections. The second photo with the side view is a little wild. It looks like various colors of paint fell on it and no one bothered to clean it off.

Trippy.

 

[cotedupy]

Got this stone in today from the UK. It’s not a particularly hard stone, lapped pretty easy. Seems porous as it doesn’t retain water on the surface very long. Measured the sg and it came in at 2.8 which to me is odd that it’s still pretty porous.

The one side is rather rudely cut. It’s soaking in some cleaner right now, feels like it was used with oil.

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This is interesting, and I’ve not seen something much like before tbh.

2.80 is a pretty dead on SG for a lot of UK slate whetstones, though the fact it’s quite porous is very curious. Slate is not very porous at all perpendicular to the orientation of the cleavage / fissility. If it was your roof would leak.

It’s probably going to be a bit difficult to say anything more than some kind of slightly unusual UK slate. Is it purple or grey? And also - how fine?

If it’s purple, and more mid-grit than finisher - then I’ve probably had the same kind of thing before. But not entirely certain of what it was, other than likely to have been Welsh.

 

[Wid]

This is interesting, and I’ve not seen something much like before tbh.

2.80 is a pretty dead on SG for a lot of UK slate whetstones, though the fact it’s quite porous is very curious. Slate is not very porous at all perpendicular to the orientation of the cleavage / fissility. If it was your roof would leak.

It’s probably going to be a bit difficult to say anything more than some kind of slightly unusual UK slate. Is it purple or grey? And also - how fine?

If it’s purple, and more mid-grit than finisher - then I’ve probably had the same kind of thing before. But not entirely certain of what it was, other than likely to have been Welsh.

It looks to be a bit less porous than initially thought. I tested it against some known slates and it was pretty much the same as the Yellow Lake, Dragons Tongue and Escher.

The color seems to have darker a bit after lapping too. In the sunlight you can see it has a bit of sparkle to it.

I’d have to guess David was right, it’s a UK slate of some sort. Looking at it with a bit of magnification it seems to be quite fine.

It is the second from the left. That is about an hour after applying the water

 

[SliceOfLife]

Bid on this old brick, remembering seeing a bunch of water of ayr in this size and cut... But it gets here and I dig up the threads and they don't have these big chamfers... My memory was wrong.

Surface doesn't look anything like a woa either... It looks like la lune... And with the monster chamfers? Maybe? Anyone ever see a monster brick la lune before? Probably not so lucky, but hey.


Other details... It's soft. Some copper/oxidation spots on the bottom.

 

[rideon66]

Saw that one and couldn't figure it out either.

 

[SliceOfLife]

Yeah... Probably not going to get tested for a bit... With how soft it is, I'm not expecting anything great... But with a little polish we'll see if it's anything worthwhile.

 

[cotedupy]

Yeah... Probably not going to get tested for a bit... With how soft it is, I'm not expecting anything great... But with a little polish we'll see if it's anything worthwhile.

Barmy looking stone!

If it's fairly soft then might have been used for polishing in the past perhaps...?

 

[SliceOfLife]

So took a finished razor to it and it didn't seem to remove any steel. Stropped it up and razor was roughly the same HHT as before, maybe a tiny bit stepped back... just generally indicated this stone doesn't remove steel.


Took an 8k finished razor to it and wiping the razor after showed mostly stone swarf... looked like a little steel in there, but couldn't be sure. HHT did show that the stone works though... pretty good, but not exceptional HHT. I'll probably do a fully fresh honed razor on it and make sure I max it out before fridays shave... but looking like a decent razor finisher, albeit very soft and very slow.

 

[SliceOfLife]

Polished razor up some more... Again couldn't tell if any steel was removed, but HHT took a nice step up.

Edge rapidly degraded during the shave though. I completed the shave without much trouble, but some aftershave burn and shave nowhere near as close as it should have been given the sharpness at the start of the shave.

Very fine... But borderline too slow for razor finishing. Usable, but not great. Maybe oil will give better results. We'll see.

 

[Legion]

What the heck do I have here?

8x2” light greenish colour. Slate like. From the colour I thought it might be an Escher, but I’ve never seen one with layers like that on the sides.

 

[Empire straights]

What the heck do I have here?

8x2” light greenish colour. Slate like. From the colour I thought it might be an Escher, but I’ve never seen one with layers like that on the sides.

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I'd wager that might be something much more special and if not still a HUGE win. That may be one in the Nantel(?) Family maybe? Or could be a cut across 4 layers of thuri. Looks fun either way! I've got a big chunk I think is a LG thuri but I've not played too much, a big blue one too..