Thread: What is the Sp Gr of Your Best Arkansas Stone

Originally Posted by Neil Miller

Whether it was mined 'old' or 'new', if it is a genuine novaculite than both are around 350 million years old!

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 ?

Jimmy,

I can understand how this might have come about when a mine is actually depleted, for instance when the seam of whetstone is getting so thin it is not viable to get it out. However, there are usually other mines...

Even when stones are graded (eg selected thuringians sold under the Escher label) that doesn't mean that all the rest were just chucked in a spoil heap or left littering the floor of a mine. Escher, for example, sold stones that did not meet there somewhat rigid standards to others.

In the cases of this happening in other mines, smaller sized stones could be sold to jewellers, precision engineers and watchmakers. something not suitable for a rectangular hone might well be useful as a wheel type. Some were crushed up and the abrasive powder was used.

What I am getting at is that it does not necessarily mean that anything produced in modern times is a second-rate leftover.

There is also the marketing element to wade through. Back in the day they could get away with outrageous claims. So we find examples of 'old rock' and 'deep rock' coticules described as par excellence, superior to the others, extra fine, extra extra fine, and so on. There were a lot of people trying to make a living selling the same product, so they needed the edge. Jean Jacques Perret's masterly Art of the Cutler goes back to the 1770s for instance, and the sharpening stones used in it are veined coticules (it also throws the concept of all pre 1800 razors being wedges that have been hollow ground in more modern times out of the window - all the pictures of razors shown in the book are hollow ground).

Another aspect is the perception of value - how much you paid for something. If a seller attaches a high price, a very high price, to something that to all intents and purposes looks like a far cheaper article, then I reckon at least 70% of the time the buyer is happy because he bought the best possible. I can still see this happening today, particularly with jnats.

Another thing to consider, with regard to oilstones, is how they were prepared. While in the ground the stone, no matter how impervious it seems, appears to pick up a small moisture content - what the old-timers referred to as 'sap'. The stone was left sitting above ground for a prolonged amount of time in order to drain away or evaporate this sap. I have witnessed the effect first hand - the rock is softish to a degree when first raised, after a period of drying it appears to get much harder and consequently harder to work. The process seem to be irreversible - or perhaps it just needs burying again for a few millennia!
Oilstones - some, anyway - went a degree further - they were baked in oil. I don't know if they still do that.

Perhaps the last thing to throw into the mix is the amount of time the stone has been about and used. Of all the stones bought, say, 150 years ago it would be most likely that only the best performing ones would still be around. The ones that didn't cut the mustard would be sharing bin space with last weeks food scraps. Thus the remainder have undergone what you might call the ultimate QC testing - that of time.

Regards,
Neil

It's about the same with any economically desirable rock or mineral. Go back a couple hundred years and the pickings were plenty. You could literally walk along the surface and pick up all manner of things. As time goes by the easy pickins are mined out and you have to do some serious work to get the materials. Often times the items are still there and very plentiful but the work involved to get at it simply makes no economic sense. Of course many times the items are totally mined out but that happens more with really valuable things like gold for instance. Sometimes a new location is discovered and the supply increases and the prices drop.

I kind of doubt many would be interested in researching and developing new sources for hones because it is so specialized there simply isn't enough money in it. It would be up to some small time operator to do the work in hopes of making enough money to justify the investment and the time it would require.

If you visit old locations there are usually mine dumps and you might be surprised what can be found on many dumps. Ask any rockhound.

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

I kind of doubt many would be interested in researching and developing new sources for hones because it is so specialized there simply isn't enough money in it. It would be up to some small time operator to do the work in hopes of making enough money to justify the investment and the time it would require.

Brings to mind Ardennes Coticule on the one hand and The Scot's quarry where Coulie was getting the Tams from on the other hand. IIRC Ardennes is not mainly mining for coticules, paving stones and other construction materials were the main focus. The coticule happened to be a fortuitous sideline. IIRC Coulie said getting rocks from the fellow with the Tam O'Shanters was like pulling teeth. Just not a daily operating mine, and the owner was not easy to reach or to deal with. Correct me if I'm (shudder) wrong.

Did the tams and the water of ayr stones come from the same place? I have a friend who perked up right away when I asked a question about water of ayr, as it was his job to try to get a hold of them for the silversmiths at williamsburg to use. He said they were fairly difficult to get and then disappeared.

Originally Posted by DaveW

Did the tams and the water of ayr stones come from the same place? I have a friend who perked up right away when I asked a question about water of ayr, as it was his job to try to get a hold of them for the silversmiths at williamsburg to use. He said they were fairly difficult to get and then disappeared.

Yes more or less the Tams, WOA, Dalmore Blue & Yellow all came out of that same geographical area. There were just a few quarries/mines involved in harvesting and selling them IIRC. I have a little booklet on it somewhere. I think the WOA was the least common, maybe even rare. I've had one in my long life. Not that my having 'one' means anything, just say that I only had the opportunity to get one and that wasn't for lack of trying. I got mine right from Coulie too, so they weren't exactly popping up all over the place. It's gone BTW, traded for something I wanted more ...... and that is gone too !! ...........

I asked the guy to describe the characteristics of the WOA, and he pretty much just said "i don't know, they're just what was traditionally used to polish silver".

I don't know what they've used since then, they might've kept stock there. If he'd have thought they'd make a great razor hone, he would've told me. Same guy was ordering frictionite hones and super punjabs for the carvers and the carpenters there, as well as spydercos long before there was a spate of modern hones.

that's a long way of getting to saying that it sounds like you weren't immensely impressed with them as a razor hone, either, but I'm not surprised.

Well Dave, I think the WOA is probably a good finisher. At the time, it was the thrill of the chase more than the object of desire. Once I got it, I was on to the next big thing, and didn't really give it as much attention as I might have. Maybe tried a couple of razors on it, but the Escher was my favorite then and now.

I would have hung on to that WOA but a friend had been wanting one for years, he had a stone I wanted more than the WOA, so we both ended up happy ....... probably for at least fifteen minutes ........

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

Brings to mind Ardennes Coticule on the one hand and The Scot's quarry where Coulie was getting the Tams from on the other hand. IIRC Ardennes is not mainly mining for coticules, paving stones and other construction materials were the main focus. The coticule happened to be a fortuitous sideline. IIRC Coulie said getting rocks from the fellow with the Tam O'Shanters was like pulling teeth. Just not a daily operating mine, and the owner was not easy to reach or to deal with. Correct me if I'm (shudder) wrong.

That is really a very common circumstance. Some of the best Turquoise ever mined came from places like Bisbee and Kingman where copper mining was the main goal and the mine operators allowed the minors to remove the Turquoise and take it home. It was a good moral booster for the minors who sold it and encouraged them to mine harder to find more Turquoise.

The same with Sugilite which is a manganese mineral that is purple and very valuable and found only one place in the world in a manganese mine in Russia. They found a vein and once mined out that was it. They found more about 1000 feet lower but weren't going to mine all that material just to get the Sugilite. Then they discovered more of the stuff in Brazil and now it's dirt cheap and plentiful.

Kenneth Montgomerie was the elderly owner of the Tam O'Shanter Honeworks. The mine was not a working mine, hadn't been for years, but it did have a stockpile of assoted hones, tams, WoAs, combinations, some boxed, slips for jewellers etc.

I phoned Kenneth on many occasions - he was always going to phone back with a price, but never did. He stopped answering the phone for a while - the poor old boy had been very ill, so I quit bothering him.

I was a freelance designer for a while and knew many intaglio printing suppliers, they stocked tams and WoAs, so I tried them. They got their stones from Kenneth, but like me they had given up, all of them.

Same story with all the old traditional jewellers supply houses. Some still called the stones by the old names, but they invariably turned out to be modern synthetic equivalents. Trouble is, the young assistants did not know the difference - the synthetic stones were tams and WoAs as far as they knew.

I have had a few, well, more than a few WoAs since then and can confirm they are very good finishers indeed, on a par with good thuringian hones, and sharing similar characteristics - broadly speaking.

Regards,
Neil