info on the novaculite stones
Here is a bit of info that I got from a gentleman that is familar with the arkansas novaculite stones . He sells what he terms as mountain man hones. Here is what he had to say about this hone (I passed the link to this thread for him to look at)
It looks similar. Actually, some of the stone I see at the quarry looks just like that, and with heating it will bring out the yellow more. The stone is Arkansas Novaculite. There are many different colors and composition of these stones, and this just happens to be a yellow variant. Mine are striped yellow, red, and gray, although, there are others that are solid black, white, pink, blue, yellow, and even peach colored. Arkansas Novaculite is as different in color as any stone comes. It all depends on where you quarry it as to what color it will be. I have even seen some quarries that have a lot of the different colors, but all act the same when honing. The key to a good Novaculite stone is the initial heat treating of it. As there are difference in colors ... there are also the types that act differently to different temperatures. I heat all of my 'rainbow' novaculite stones up to 850 degrees in a pottery kiln for up to 8 hours. Some blacks, yellow, and white solids only take 650 degrees for 6 hours to meet the same criteria. The microscopic cracks he sees in the stone are from heat treating. The heating process causes a chain reaction in the silica molecules and causes them to either fuse together or pull apart. This is what brings out the fine honing ability of these stones. The slurry color may either be a milky silica concentration or just from use of the stone.
so for what it is worth, there is another opinion.