Thread: Thoughts on oil covered bricks?

First of all, welcome. Glad you decided to join us here. Maybe stop by the member introductions thread in the beginners section. Seems as though maybe you're not a beginner exactly but that's just where it is housed. Tell us something about yourself, your experience level, what part of the world you're in, your equipment, oh and post some more pictures. We love pictures.

Concerning buying rocks, I assume you mean on auction sites like eBay or other online sellers. Yes, there is a lot of the false representation out there. I guess the word is out that if it is a knife stone people will pay $X.XX for it but if it is a razor hone (we even use our own fancy word for it:" hone" instead of stone) that people will add a zero to the end of that price. Forgive me if I am telling you stuff you already know but we in the straight razor world are subject to many afflictions such as RAD: razor acquisition disorder, SAD: soap acquisition disorder, and there are many others, not least among them HAD: hone acquisition disorder. This contributes to the asking prices. Maybe there are people who prize fancy rocks for knives too but I think that is a smaller cross section.

Anyway, in answer to your question, speaking for myself at least, there is a lot of dice rolling based on educated guessing. Once you get really acquainted with certain rocks you can sometimes see the diamond in the mud. And then sometimes I'm wrong and you hear the sad trombones on opening the package. There is also that phenomenon like the cartoons where the guys are stranded on an island and the one guy looks at the other and sees a steak. I try to avoid that but HAD can be an ugly, hideous affliction.

I personally have had pretty good luck with gambles but I prefer to see it in person. Generally the antique stores ask a premium and there is a lot of camel trading involved. Even then some people like the put museum wax or spray lacquer or whatever the dark shiny crap is on tools which includes hones, particularly boxed ones. That makes it even harder to tell because you can't spritz and dab a corner with WD-40 and a rag easily to get a closer look. I bought what I am quite certain is a washita like that that is still in the project queue because I can't get that $&#¥ off of it.
I'm sure smarter people than I have better methods but that's what I have on the matter. Hey, at least what you found wasn't an Ace hardware synthetic knife stone.