Whatever next...

[Neil Miller]

I guess most of us know the background of the Yellow Lake Oilstone, there having been so much posted about them both in the past and recently.

To sum up they were a vintage hone, originally (possibly!) from the Yellow Lake area in Wales (called Lyn Melylnyn in welsh) and that the company was owned mostly by A B Salmen, the Executors of A B Salmen, and The Successors to A B Salmen.

The stones seem to have come from a number of quarries, including the Inigo Jones quarry, and were of several - perhaps four - types, most of them dark grey. One was a calcareous rather than a siliceous slate and was special - the highest grade finisher in the line, rating around the same as a good thuringian (not more than 12k) and there were some purple slates, but these were in the minority and were a rather mixed bunch with regard to grit equivalents, some going as low as 6k and the average around 9k.

However, "Yellow Lake" was a brand name, not the name of an individual hone, so no distinction was made among the different hones that the brand name encompassed.

They came in a variety of thin card boxes - blue ones, red ones, yellow ones, etc. I have seen a lot of them, but not one with a label of any sort.

Now we have an Eb*y offering of new Yellow Lake Oilstones. "New?" I hear you say. Quite. And they come with 'labels' that are acknowledged to be reproductions in the listing - a good thing, but note that they have been produced in label form, not the original card box form as obviously this would cost a lot more than the output of a personal printer, so they hardly echo the original offering.



Not that I have any real issues with that (except for the inflated grit equivalent quoted) but what happens further down the line? The world abounds with the gullible, and when these are sold on with their carefully preserved labels there will be no E***y listing accompanying them to point out that the label is a reproduction.

Just another case of 'Buyer Beware' but at some time in the future on this occasion...

Regards,
Neil