Quote Originally Posted by RusenBG View Post
About good 12 k hone , from the naturals , i would recomand you to get a quality turkey oil stone - the darker is , the beter and finer, they are . Look especialy for the kind of stone called black Lidyte . It is ordinary used by the gold sellers, to check the quality of the jeulery . A good stone of this kind , turkey origin not India , is amazing finisher , even the Esher thuri canot give someting more to the edge . I have 3 hones of this stone , and they are stunning finishers - they give very smooth and very crisp and sharp edge . I get 2 more of them the last week and im very hapy with them . They required a perfect lapping and they work with water mixed with liquid soap or dish washing soap . You can use carosene ,or beter WD 40 . The oil makes them slower , i prefer water . You will not be sorry about those stones , they work amazing and the only thing is that , they required presure - light to moderate . Without presure are slower like all hard stones . But they are many times faster that the chnese 12 k .
Lidyte is actualy a black JASPER - Basanite .Very consistant , fine and abrasive - you can see the metal tracs on the surface of the stone after few strokes . They are not expensive stones , but they are polishers anf finishers of highest class .
Black Lydite is called "Touchstone"
Sorry guys for getting off topic, but I seriously think we should make something like an SRP wiki page about the Turkish oilstones. We don't know where it comes or its history, only speculations, allowing many sellers to use the name for absolutely any stone that may or may not look like one, while they don't know what is it.
And, no, Turkish oilstone is a type of Novaculite, not Jasper. SRP is probably the leading site on information about hones among other things, and, two or three posts saying that the stone is a type of Jasper will make it real, given the limited information we have about them.

Of course, I meant no offense to anyone.