The Yellow Lake Oilstone was produced and marketed in various guises by AB Salmen in the UK for the best part of 100 years. The name derives from their original quarry at Llyn Melynlyn, which probably produced the classic purple variety of slate associated with that name. However this was sold in the early c.20th century and a number of other types of stone were marketed under the Yellow Lake brand subsequently. Here I'm going to look at a few types and examine the differences between them.
---
This is the purple type of Yellow Lake, with a big green splodge down the bottom. It is a fine stone, hard for a slate, not as slow as you might think, and a very competent razor finisher:
A novaculite whetstone was also marketed under the YL brand, of the type we would call Llyn Idwal, though it is perfectly possible the stone came from the area around Melynlyn too. Llyns Idwal and Melynllyn are reasonably close to each other and there are a number of quarries around both that produced this kind of stone.
Unlike other varieties of YL this type appears to have a multicoloured rather than monochrome label, and it was attached to the stone. My example here is on the coarser end of medium, a fast and fine knife or tool stone, or a prefinisher for a razor:
---
Those two examples above are more unusual, or less common to come across. In the next post I'll look at the types of dark slate most commonly associated with the Yellow Lake Oilstone brand for most of its life...
---
This is the purple type of Yellow Lake, with a big green splodge down the bottom. It is a fine stone, hard for a slate, not as slow as you might think, and a very competent razor finisher:
A novaculite whetstone was also marketed under the YL brand, of the type we would call Llyn Idwal, though it is perfectly possible the stone came from the area around Melynlyn too. Llyns Idwal and Melynllyn are reasonably close to each other and there are a number of quarries around both that produced this kind of stone.
Unlike other varieties of YL this type appears to have a multicoloured rather than monochrome label, and it was attached to the stone. My example here is on the coarser end of medium, a fast and fine knife or tool stone, or a prefinisher for a razor:
---
Those two examples above are more unusual, or less common to come across. In the next post I'll look at the types of dark slate most commonly associated with the Yellow Lake Oilstone brand for most of its life...