Neil, I was thinking about that very thing reading this thread yesterday. The first time someone pointed that out to me was in regard to coticules. It seemed so obvious I was surprised I'd never thought of it before. Still and all, I recall, in the 1970s, the first time I was exposed to Arkansas stones, reading in knife/gun magazines, that the 'old' vintage stones were better than the new ones. The 'good' stones had long since been mined and the available piles largely depleted. At that time I picked up some a set of Washita, Soft Ark, and Hard Ark from Smith's. They worked very well on my knives.
Where they went over the years I don't know, but ebay yielded the same stones + a black hard Ark in vintage Pike/Norton versions. Probably from what those old magazine writers would have considered the golden years. There seems to be a tendency, I've noticed, for folks to glorify products from the past, whether it is rocks, razors, automobiles, or firearms and musical instruments. So were the old rocks better than what is available today, or is it nostalgia ?
I was considering this yesterday and it occurred to me that while all of the coticules, Charnleys, Arks are more or less of the same geological age, there were vast deposits that were quarried/mined way back in 'the day.' So while the chances of getting a 'great' stone is still a possibility today, wouldn't it make sense that it was more likely years ago, when the deposits were still quite large and hadn't been mined out ? A law of averages type of thing. Of course whether a stone comes in a box labeled Pike, Norton or Dan's doesn't make a difference to me if it is a good stone. As my grandmother used to say when my mother called me handsome, "Handsome is as handsome does."
Thoughts ? :thinking: