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

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

Originally Posted by Neil Miller

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

Shame they weren't more widely available then!

Originally Posted by DaveW

Shame they weren't more widely available then!

I expect they were, at one time.

These days they are comparatively rare - you find the odd single stone:





but more usually find them in combos such as this one:





which is glued to a tam. Notice that the wording on the WoA label reads "For Razors, Scalpels or Very Fine Knives.

I suspect that most of them were used by jewellers, cut into slip stones of various sizes. The main use seems to have been polishing precious metals prior to rouge buffing, as the hone did not leave any appreciable marks on the metal, and easing watch and clock escapements, once again because no appreciable scratch pattern was left that might catch on the clock movement.

One use involved powdering up a piece of the stone and using a paste made from it, but I cannot remember offhand what this was used for. When I tlaked to Kenneth he said he had a quantity of the singles, some larger hones that were not cut down to size and some combination hones. He did mention having had someone to help sort and cut them (no mining was done - this was all old stock raised a very long time ago) but I got the feeling that this other person had gone and poor old Kenneth could not keep up with demand.

One person - Adrsprach? - from this site did go visiting there once.

Regards,
Neil

Regards,
Neil

Originally Posted by Neil Miller

One person - Adrsprach? - from this site did go visiting there once.

Some years ago Simon Coulie was the source for the Tams, Dalmores and WOA, limited on the WOA. I cannot remember whether he went personally, or whether someone, maybe Adrspach, went on his behalf.