Odd Arkansas stone

[cotedupy]

The stone is about 6x2x1/2 give or take a tiny bit. And I had checked my other arks to see about any translucency and yes right along the edge except a soft black stone that has some white swirls in it that are very translucent. I have not checked S.G. yet

Yeah good idea - measuring the SG can give you a decent idea in terms of trying to define stuff.

The spectrum of Washitas and Soft Arks is very wide though, and they're kinda the same thing anyway. Back in the day they were all 'Ouachitas', before Pike decided at the beginning of the c.20th that only their type of relatively hard yet highly porous stone was a real 'Washita'.

 

[Bowmaker]

Oh really? I only have 3 or 4 but all pass light to some extent.

Are they white?

 

[Empire straights]

None of my softs pass any light, even the ones that are very thin. It's not like I have owned a hundred of them but that has been my experience.

The only soft that I have that does is a very old pike soft ark that 9/10 knowledgeable people would call a hard fine washita.

 

[Gamma]

The photos aren't clear enough for me to id the grain in the stone.
But the description - softer, faster - if it is novaculite, then it would have to be a soft soft Ark or a Washita.

Specific gravity can give a false ***/neg due to voids and impurities.
I prefer to judge based on stone character.
What it looks like is a guess, and to guess it looks like a later Washita but a closer clearer photo might reveal more. Brand is irrelevant without a label really. If it cuts, it cuts, who quarried it won't change that.

A lot of old Washita were cut wider than 2" but 6x2x0.5" is common size.

All/mostly white Washita, Soft Arks, Hard Arks and Trans Arks may allow light to pass thru.
Not all of them do, but I've had many in all of those 'classes' transmit light. I've seen people mistake Soft Arks for Translucents over this...

 

[sydres]

I apologize for raising the dead, but I recently got a scale and tested the SG of a bunch of my arks the above one included and it's exactly 2.5 not sure what that means since its still very quick and gives up slurry maybe not an ark?

 

[Empire straights]

I wonder if that stone and the OP's wouldn't look more Washita like once it absorbed some oil?
Awesome find there, I wonder what time frame it's from?

Gaurenteed.

 

[Empire straights]

I apologize for raising the dead, but I recently got a scale and tested the SG of a bunch of my arks the above one included and it's exactly 2.5 not sure what that means since its still very quick and gives up slurry maybe not an ark?

If it's 2.5 I'd imagine it's a hard/ fine washita if it's friable as well that's as good as it gets for a knife stone. I've got newer white hard smith's stones that if they were just a little softer I'd call them washitas but if the were a little more compact they'd be hard Arks. Some old washitas are like that too but friability is what makes them special. Like surat stones. The fact that they break up under very little pressure makes them so fast on water. On oil it coasts and gets really fine. The old fine/ soft washitas do this. I got one in the dip right now that's really soft but I think it's medium but I've been surprised before. Either way I think it's a pike because of the clam shell on the bottom, it's the whole length of the stone nearly.

 

[sydres]

It came in a set that had a large and small "razor edge" brand clamp on sharpener,a large block of coarse silicon carbide razor edge branded stone, the finest silicon carbide stone I've ever used probably twice as fine as regular India an 8x2 hard ark, the stone in question and a thin slip of a black 6x2 ark. In a box that looked to be from the seventies. I think the razor edge stuff came out in the 1970s so if this was all bought then it's not too old.