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06-26-2014, 09:00 AM #1
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Thanked: 3164Kenneth 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
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DaveW (06-26-2014)
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06-26-2014, 11:29 AM #2
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06-26-2014, 01:20 PM #3
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Thanked: 3164I 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
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06-26-2014, 01:25 PM #4Be careful how you treat people on your way up, you may meet them again on your way back down.
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06-26-2014, 01:49 PM #5
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06-26-2014, 05:35 PM #6
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Thanked: 458I've seen pictures of that site somewhere online, it is a museum now or some sort of protected heritage site, isn't it? (the buildings where the WOAs were cut)? IIRC, there are still piles of stones inside the building, but given the designation, I'm sure that they would like to see them stay there.