You can find really exceptionally fine examples. I think sebastian has one as fine as mine was. I mean, mine was pretty damn fine before I wrung everything out of it. There are some that are prefinisher/finisher fine.
What on Earth is this thing?
- Thread starter eKretz
- Start date
I've tried Sebastian's as pictured above, and it seemed very similar to my "genre Levant--lisse" as shown. Don't know if he has another one, although knowing him, he probably has a shoe box full of them. ;-) That one, which is in France still, had been smoothed by quite a few blades. I'm going to try to smooth one of these I've got here kind of like how you said and see what happens.
The other thing about the company at Saurat is that they do not sell outside of EU addresses. Maybe it has to do with receiving funding from the French government (by whom they are supported); so one has to deal with smaller merchants who will sell them to the US address. That may be why they are not so well known here, and I do wonder about their former prevalence here as well. Mine have been purchased in France, where they are extremely easy to come by (i.e., a local hardware store in my wife's small home town in the Vosges mountains has them); but even there, I don't think that their maximum potential, if it is indeed as high as suggested, is recognized.
The other thing about the company at Saurat is that they do not sell outside of EU addresses. Maybe it has to do with receiving funding from the French government (by whom they are supported); so one has to deal with smaller merchants who will sell them to the US address. That may be why they are not so well known here, and I do wonder about their former prevalence here as well. Mine have been purchased in France, where they are extremely easy to come by (i.e., a local hardware store in my wife's small home town in the Vosges mountains has them); but even there, I don't think that their maximum potential, if it is indeed as high as suggested, is recognized.
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I'd love to know if the guys who pull these out of the ground have any clue where/had elders in their family that pulled the lunes out of the ground in the same general area...
Oh no, we're talking about Lune stones now. I thought that Sebastian et cie. had substantially proven that the F.G.B.C. mines were in the Moselle vicinity rather than the Pyrenees.
Did he? IDK, I don't read enough threads.
OFF TOPIC:
Not really Alan ;-) i just pointed out that its a possibility that the names of the quarries mentioned on the FGBC Ads and Invoices would be the first places to start and probably one of those could be hit....
Otherwise Luneville/Merviller is something iam interested in.....
On the third Steige would be a place i would like to visit....
So there is lot of research to do ;-)
Not really Alan ;-) i just pointed out that its a possibility that the names of the quarries mentioned on the FGBC Ads and Invoices would be the first places to start and probably one of those could be hit....
Otherwise Luneville/Merviller is something iam interested in.....
On the third Steige would be a place i would like to visit....
So there is lot of research to do ;-)
Here are the ones i own, they often come up and even experienced people do not know what they are, probably why they are not as well known in other countries....
I have another nice example here from Sharpchef (Sebastian) which looks really interesting. It has some bigger Iron blotches....i will post some pictures here...
Interesting is that Saurat mentions these to be used with water. All stones i got were used with Oil.....
All people to which i wrote personally (KCB, Sharpchef, Alan, etc) did not rate that stone in the 1k area where it is mostly put in....we mostly agreed them more into 4-6k area, and probably higher depending of the material itself and how the surface is prepared, which was nicely shown here from KCB ;-)
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They are very interesting stones. If you look at it without tactile examination, it looks like it should be rough as a carbo, but then it turns the tables on you by not being that way at all. You could probably have some twisted pyrenees to levant series of slurry free steps to get to a shaving edge provided you had a couple of complimentary pieces of levant and set the four sides up differently on each hone.
- Thread starter
- #49
Oh there are definitely different levels of fineness between the "types" or "grades" of this stone. Here are some scope shots that illustrate it pretty well. These are all 3 freshly pencil gridded and lapped with the same Atoma 400 plate. They all finish pretty well correlating with what you'd expect on slurry - closer on oil when all lapped much finer, but still finer as you go down, as one might expect.
Levant "Coarse"
Levant "Fine"
Levant "X-Fine"
Levant "Coarse"
Levant "Fine"
Levant "X-Fine"
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Yes, a very interesting color range. I reread my notes from a while back and indeed, I had used your "monster" stone, Sebastian, as though it were a mid-range stone and not a bevel-setter as I recently mentioned. But then continued to use my Pyrenees stone as a bevel-setter, going by the book as it were.
So I lapped one of my "genre Levant--lisse" stones to 120x and the other to 1000x, with the intention of smoothing the latter with a BBW and possibly a piece of Arkansas. As for polish right now, it seems to have lost some relative what the blades did beforehand. I also lapped the already smoothed side of one my "Idéale 2 grains" broken pieces to 600x. Surface there now seems smoother than as received. Earlier, the question of a cigar-like smell arose. In lapping, the "genre Levant--lisse" stone had a faint musty smell, nothing out of the ordinary; however, the smell of the "Idéale 2 grains" was decidedly more pungent while lapping. Not exactly the smell of a cigar, but something approaching the smell of ground cumin by way of comparison.
Edit: hadn't seen eKretz's surface shots before posting. But these do bring up the question of the use of the term "Levant" for all of them.
So I lapped one of my "genre Levant--lisse" stones to 120x and the other to 1000x, with the intention of smoothing the latter with a BBW and possibly a piece of Arkansas. As for polish right now, it seems to have lost some relative what the blades did beforehand. I also lapped the already smoothed side of one my "Idéale 2 grains" broken pieces to 600x. Surface there now seems smoother than as received. Earlier, the question of a cigar-like smell arose. In lapping, the "genre Levant--lisse" stone had a faint musty smell, nothing out of the ordinary; however, the smell of the "Idéale 2 grains" was decidedly more pungent while lapping. Not exactly the smell of a cigar, but something approaching the smell of ground cumin by way of comparison.
Edit: hadn't seen eKretz's surface shots before posting. But these do bring up the question of the use of the term "Levant" for all of them.
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Mine really smelled horrible during lapping. These actually do continue conditioning a fair bit under blades... I forgot to mention that.
- Thread starter
- #52
My 3 are all identical in color other than minor shade variation, they have the same sparkles and that same little wavy surface mottled color effect. If they aren't all sourced from the same place I'd be very surprised. They all have the same sort of smell when lapped as well. The only difference seems to be the grain tightness/abrasive size and hardness. The two finer stones are very hard, almost Ark level. The coarser stone is considerably softer, as I noted in the first post more like a medium-hard JNat or maybe a smidge harder. None of them seem to cut much of anything on straight water when lapped with a worn Atoma 400, and all 3 glaze and get super shiny if you try to. On oil they all cut and don't glaze much if at all. The "coarse" stone cuts quite quickly on slurry, "fine" cuts pretty slowly and finely and "x-fine" cuts very slowly and finer yet.
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- Thread starter
- #53
Here are a few more scope shots. First 3 are lit more to show the stone surface colors, then two shots from a test razor honed on slurry on the middle grit "fine" variant. Edge passed HHT3 to some HHT4.
"Coarse"
"Fine"
"X-Fine"
Raking Light
Edge Lit/Focused
"Coarse"
"Fine"
"X-Fine"
Raking Light
Edge Lit/Focused
- Thread starter
- #54
Next test I will bring a razor up to 5k on synths and hit the fine stone lapped very smoothly with oil.
- Thread starter
- #55
Found this while googling Pierre Levant hone today. It's a translation of a French text by Bart Torfs. Seems like there are definitely different varieties of the stones.
- Thread starter
- #56
OK just honed a test razor on the 'XF' variant - stone was lapped on 1200 Atoma, then smoothed with a SGK 20k rubbing stone while wet (effectively loose grit lapping with SGK 20k grit particles). Stropped 5 laps on denim, 40 laps on clean leather. Strong HHT4. I believe this will provide a very nice shave - tested in a small area on my neck but don't have enough stubble for a full shave yet. BTW random aberrant scratches are from some circles laps I did - probably should have left those out. All in all, very shallow scratch pattern that can only be viewed directionally.
Built-in Ring Light
Scratch Enhancing Light
Reflective Lighting (Gives an idea what you see with the naked eye)
Raking Light
Edge Light/Focus
Built-in Ring Light
Scratch Enhancing Light
Reflective Lighting (Gives an idea what you see with the naked eye)
Raking Light
Edge Light/Focus
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- Thread starter
- #57
Just finished a shave with this edge. Very nice, better shave than the 8k Shapton gives IMO. Not quite Ark level keen, but very close. And I could probably do better if I worked it a bit longer, IIRC I only did 50ish laps on the Levant. WTG and ATG and got BBS. Maybe between a 1 and 2 out of 10 on the post-shave alum sting.
