Which stone is this:
Attachment 138162Attachment 138163Attachment 138164Attachment 138165
Any idea anyone? Any other stones like this out there?
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Which stone is this:
Attachment 138162Attachment 138163Attachment 138164Attachment 138165
Any idea anyone? Any other stones like this out there?
Is it not an Escher or Thuringan ? Looks like it to me. :shrug:
Indian love stone??
It is a very hard stone compared to the Escher/Thuringian waterwhetstones. More like Novaculite. Can be used with water or oil. However not a japanese nor a CF/LI and not an ark.
It looks like it shares some of the features of a turkey oilstone - one that has not been seasoned in oil. Like one of the 'new' ones. The colurs, fractures and colouration in the crack are reminiscent of the exaples I have. They are very hard and have similar looking skin, sometimes with small holes like bubbles, and fissures.
Its hard to tell from such a small piece, though.
Vasilis would know better than me.
Regards,
Neil
Good guess Neil, thanks for the answer. But the stone is not a turkey stone!
These kind of stones were very well know in the middle ages. They were found in a lot of old middle age centres, also in Haitabu, which was a famous trading centre of the vikings in the 9-11th century.
Also they are found in some celtic opidums which existed more than 2000 years in the past.
The stones were mined constantly until WW1 and fewer till WW2 as the quarries were carried to end.
That is why I said one of the new ones, Hatzicho.
They are not quite the same as the old ones - the old ones seem finer, but once seasoned in olive oil they look quite similar. 'New' just means new source, the stone themselves are ancient, of course.
I have a number of the vintage ones and several new ones from Vasilis - he found a supplier, and a lot of people on the coticule forum use them in conjunction with a coticule.
Unlike the vintage type, these ones are at the bevel-setting end of the spectrum, but benefit from a slurry (extremely hard to make without a diamond hone) which breaks down so you can get to mid level before finishing with a coticule.
There are, as we know, many types of this stone from many regions, none of which can be traced back to a turkish origin, except perhaps by way of trade routes. Ther has been extensive discussion on this forum in the past about them and their origins, for anyone who cares to use the search function (which I find quite unreliable, BTW).
As I say, Vasilis is very qualified to tell us more about the 'new' turkish hones (or turkey oilstones, or cretan hones, or candia hones or ex-ottoman empire hones or whatever else people want t call them! :) )
Regards,
Neil
Really no stones like this one out there? There must be some, they have been traded for the last 300 years!
The stones were mined in 2 different qualities a yellow one and a blue one, whereas the yellow layers have been found only deeper in the earth and must therefore been mined underground.
Here is a couple more of these stones:
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The typical attribute of the stones is a harsh rhombical structur with enclaved red iron oxide on the outside of the layer:
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This attribute also gave this kind of stones there typical trading name.
The hones have been used by barbers, jewellers and goldsmith mainly.
Have I misunderstood, Hatzicho - is it a quiz? Do you already know what it is called?
Regards,
Neil
Well sorry Neil,
the thread might indeed be a little bit misunderstanding from the wording. This is not a quiz and please be sure that I don’t want to play any games with the experts.
I really thought this kind of stones must be known, maybe not from the name or even their origin, but from the appearance and application.
Well to disclose the secret, this stones are thuringian stones. Not the soft well known waterwhetstones like the Escher labeled hones which are upper Devonian age and were first discovered in the year 1806 in Steinach Germany.
The stones were are talking about here are much older, as already said, they have been traded from the early middle ages on, they were found in the important European trading centers like Haithabu, which was a main centre of the Vikings around the 10th century. The stones are of Ordovician age and represent a special class of whetstones.
The stones are especially found in the mountains of so called “Schwarzburger Sattel” in Thuringia and Frankonia. There are a lot of well known quarries and each stone from different quarries has different appearances, hardness and honing capabilities.
Most of the stones are very hard, comparable in hardness to a Charnley Forest/ LI or an Arkansas, they also tend to conchoidal fractures (thank you Mike for this expression) and the chips and break lines are somehow comparable to novaculite stones.
The stones I have shown in the pictures above belong to the oldest known quarry, the Hiftenberg.
According to their typical appearance with the rhombical structure on the back, the stones have been called “Hiftenberger Hirschornschalen” (I know a word nearly unspeakable for Americans :dropjaw:):
Attachment 138779Attachment 138780
The mine was closed in 1930.
Last renter of the quarry was the J.G. Escher company (ca. 1928 -1930).
But keep in mind, this stones are not comparable to the thuringian waterwhetstones!
I have not seen any labeled Ordovician hone so far. But Escher as well as the companies that rented the mine before - i.e. Bösenberg&Trinks Co. till around 1927 - sold this stones also.
So look out for this kind of stones, they are worth to own if you recognize them at an antique store or somewhere else!
Ah, I see. A kind of 20 questions quiz!
I understand that they are from the same place as thuringians that we know as waterstones, but not the importance of the contrast of stone type. After all, thuringian waterstones are far removed from the ash/clay/chalk etc sedimentary deposits (which incidentally were laid down in the Ordovician period) that through a process of sedimtation-compaction-metamorphosis formed shales and schists and finally the waterstones we know and use.
That stones of a completely different nature are found within sedimentary layers and have a more adamantine nature is only natural - further metamorphosis has once again changed the nature of the layers that were once just a lot of loose uncompacted mud and grit.
Such fornations can be produced by shear forces or the proximity of great heat, as in Wales where we find a particularly long seam of harder rock amongst the softer slate. Here we find slatestone, lyn idwal, grecian oilstone and possibly the mythical cutlers greenstone.
Ordovician hones are by no means rare. The honing slates at Melynllyn and those from the caradoc beds were laid down in ordovician times. Ther are sandstone hones from York of the same period. Some are even older of course, hailing back to cambrian times.
To demystify the subject:
The Paleozoic age consisted of 7 eras, the 4 oldest being-
1 cambrian, 540-490 million years ago,
2 ordovician, 490-443
3 silurian, 443-417
4 devonian, 417-434
I have never seen the particular stone whose name I, along with my american friends, apparently cannot pronounce, but I did enjoy the quiz.
Regards,
Neil
You are absolutely right Neil.
There are a lot of places in the world with Ordovician rocks. The same with upper devonian age places, there are thousands of deposits. But not any (known) place that provide the same quality of stones than the thuringian waterwhetstones.
I don’t want to say that all Ordovician age stones have a special sharpening or honing capability – I just use this distinguishing mark to separate the different thuringian whetstones.
I thought the history of the Ordovician thuringians could be an interesting item to hone experts of course not to newbies. That’s why I posted this thread, maybe with a misunderstanding or for some provoking title.
Also there is no mystic about this. I simply thought that someone talking about thuringian stones should know that there is much more to talk about than only the labeled Escher stones.
If this is not of interest – well that’s ok for me. I won’t post on this item here any more.
Interesting rocks...
Quite frankly when I looked at the first picture you posted it reminded me a very common type of stone found all over America:
Attachment 138794
Chert (microcrystalline quartz) (SiO2) includes chalcedony, agate, jasper, and flint. Chert and flint are so similar that there is no sharp distinction between them. Dark-colored nodules are called flint, and the light-colored variety is called chert. The variation may be due to the inclusion of variable amounts of organic matter. Other chert colors can include pink, brown, and purple. Chert has a conchoidal fracture, a hardness of around 7, a dull luster, and a colorless streak.
Arrowheads were commonly crafted from chert.
Chert (microcrystalline quartz) (SiO2) includes chalcedony, agate, jasper, and flint. Chert and flint are so similar that there is no sharp distinction between them. Dark-colored nodules are called flint, and the light-colored variety is called chert. The variation may be due to the inclusion of variable amounts of organic matter. Other chert colors can include pink, brown, and purple. Chert has a conchoidal fracture, a hardness of around 7, a dull luster, and a colorless streak.
The irregular masses of chert that are common in Texas limestones may have been formed by silica-rich groundwater passing through the sediments before they were lithified (formed into rocks). These irregular masses, known as nodules, often have exotic shapes uninfluenced by the textures in the host limestone.
Oh no, please continue to post!
I just think the subject would have been better as a factual one right from the start, as a piece about ordovician thuringians.
The subject is divided enough as it is - being led to guess about something already known does not help IMO, but that is just wbat it says - only my opinion.
I love to find out more abot hones, and have thoroughly enjoyed your other posts, Hatzico, so I repeat: please carry on posting.
Regards,
Neil
Excellent reading. Thank you. Another piece to the memory. Now you can just hope that similar thing will happen to what happened to CF. First very rare and now when people know what to look for they are quite available.
Please continue.
Of course keep posting about it! very interesting to me anyway, not knowing i would a definately pass this stone up if ever by luck ran into one in the wild, now because of this thread i would act differently!
To round off this thread I would like to add some older literature about the stones. The Hiftenberg stones are documented in a lot of ancient german literature of the 19th and also the 18th century.
The most detailed description of the Hiftenberg stones is found in the geographical description of the thuringian area by a famous geologist of this time.
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An attempt for a translation:
"Near Sigmundsburg below the Hüfftenberger houses is a quarry of quite an excellent stone which is known under the name of the Hüfftenberger stone. He is not only usable to sharpen barber knife(straight razors), but also particularly for copperplate engravers, jewellers, watchmakers and those who work with grave sickles. Even the nature has marked him so that no mistake can be carried out, while every stone, it might be as big or small, has spots which look in such a way, as if a little piece of buckhorn was stuck to it. They are sold very expensive, a piece of 8 to 12 inches in the squares is well paid with 3 to 4 Thaler. Today they are hard to get, because the mining is under risk of one’s life as long as the mine is not timbered properly. There are two types in colour, bluish and yellowish ones, whereas the yellow ones are a little rarer latter than the blue ones because they were found only in certain depths."
The second article I would like to mention is a Ware lexicon that describes all used, imported and exported goods in Germany in the year 1791. On page 488 of this book you will find Whetstones.
As for finer stones to sharpen knifes and fine instruments (straight razor honing is not mentioned) you found Levantiner oilstones (turkey oilstones), French oilstones from Lothringen and the Hiftenberg stones. The text mentioning the Hiftenberg stones is comparable to what you can read in former mentioned literature.
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Beside the Hiftenberg stones there are a lot of other - more or less- famous quarries of the Ordovician style hones and sharpening stones in Thuringia and the Frankonian area of Germany.
For example there is one quarry the Escher family rented for a long time.
As I have already mentioned in some other post, the Escher company did not rent or own any quarries for the Upper Devonian age whaterwhetstones till the beginning of the 20thcentury - the stones that made Escher famous. They purchased this stones from different thuringian whetstone companies, cut, lapped them and put a label on the stones and then imported the hones around the world, as Escher mainly was a trading company.
But the Escher company did had an Ordovician quarry from the beginning of their engagement with whetstones around 1790 till the early 20th. This may illustrate the importance of ordovician whetstones in the past.
This is an excellent post. Unfortunately I feel like feel like I have been trying to drink from a fire hose. Definatly need to read this a few more times (and take notes).
I'm very much interested in the natural hone. In part because I want to use them and in part because I want to find them. I have a little more research to do (ok a lot) and I'm going rock hounding.
Now that I understand the thread, I thank you for the information. I too thought it was a "what stone is this" thread, however it turned educational.
Now you must send me a stone to test so that I can put the added knowledge to the steel...
Yes... Send us all some stones!
...or tell us more!
6-8"x2"...escher size. I find that size more useful for my honing style.
A look to the ancient open quarry:
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The inscription on the plate says:
Whetstonequarry
This whetstone quarry was in operation until 1930. The here mined whetstones were exported in the middle ages up to Spain.
The quarry was known already in the 5th to 1th century B.C. - as documented by findings in the ancient celtic settlement on the “Kleinen Gleichberg” near Römhild.
Attachment 141852
Well get your Ghillie suit and get in there and grab some;)
Mike
I would be happy to test one that looks like an escher :beer2:
I would love to try one as well in combination with my coticule.
I wouldn't mind trying one, or even a Mercedes Benz or a Ferrari, but my bank balance says I'm going to have to stick with my 2005 Ford Focus ........ :p
If you can send some this way, We'll be glad to take them for a test drive....
Very familiar scenario. Hone with a big name and the quarry itself is just minute.
The main mine was under the earth. Not accessible today any more. Only kept for the bats.
Attachment 141945
This was a main pit of the mine.
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Now you know why the literature says: the old thuringian quarries are filled up with waste!
Not much to see there but still fun to have seen it, thanks!
Why is it filled with garbage?
It was pit and it only changed into a tip.
Most mines, pits and quarries tend to fill up with water. In times past when smaller shallower pits were played out the hole left behind was a hazard and it was filled with whatever they had. Maybe even garbage.
It was quite common in the older days to use closed mines, pints and other "holes in the terrain" for waste disposal. Especially when these places were near to the settlements.
Yes, and if you're in to Archaeology old trash heaps are a great place to go rummaging through. You can never tell what you will find.