I seem to have acquired one of those mysterious yellow french hones

I got this today. I can't for the life of me remember who has the collection of these sorts of hones but this one is 6.5"x2 1/4" x a hair over 3/4" and it still retains its original slurry stone.This one is interesting in the sense that it is not in a paddle and it has the defined form factor/slurry stone. Haven't had a chance to give it a shakedown yet. Harder than a thuringian to lap. Slurry looks like if you mixed chinese mustard with water.

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Yes i have the same stone , smaler and have some darker swirls in it and dark greenish patern . Soft , thury like stone but faster and coarser - 8 - 9 k level . Agresive on slurry and give good sharpnes and smoothnes for this grit size stone .
It came in an old padle board with handle , that i remouuved . It was used with oil that gives a straingt to this soft hone , non porous .
Feedback is between coticule and motled franconian q i think is a hone mined in Europe - France or Germany - reminiscent or other shistes from Germany . It could be some kind of radiolarite shist also .

Interesting. You mean they fortified the stone like how turkish oilstones are sometimes boiled in milk? This doesn't have any scent of oil at all and water does not get rejected by the surface. I know absolutely nothing about these.

No i did not say that i said that mine was in a padle board and it was covered with oily shit . I think that is a coticule covered with oil , but thats what came out of the oil . Could theese stones be some kind of a coticule .

It doesn't seem like a coticule to me. More than slurry or appearance, coticules smell really unmistakeable when you slurry them and this doesn't smell like that. It feels like it will be very fine. I don't think it will be in the super league of fine, but it does feel fine in a similar way to how a lot of cotis do on the surface. It's strange material. I never saw a piece that wasn't cut and shaped for a paddle so it is interesting that I got this big rectangle of it.

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Originally Posted by RusenBG

No i did not say that i said that mine was in a padle board and it was covered with oily shit . I think that is a coticule covered with oil , but thats what came out of the oil . Could theese stones be some kind of a coticule .

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Rusen my friend - a shist covered with oily shit - is that a recommendation or an observation?!

Just kidding - I know what you mean, couldn't resist though.... :)

Regards,
Neil

It looks like a coticule. I don't know what else it might be. There are dark coticules that are all coticule that were intended for tools.

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Originally Posted by DaveW

It looks like a coticule. I don't know what else it might be. There are dark coticules that are all coticule that were intended for tools.

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No dont think its a Coti, KCB has several Coticules iam shure he knows the difference....especially as he has both (Coticules) and the Mystery Stone beside each other.....

Could this be a synthesized version of a coticule. I seem to recall an old thread on here about just such a mystery stone and a prevailing theory was that at some point a coticule quarry saved its leavings and bound it together somehow into a hone. So pretty much just like today's modern synthetic hones only using coticule slurry as its matrix? I am curious but I find this theory to be very possible. I have one of these stones myself. They are aggressive and make good pre-finishers but IMHO they lack the finesse and subtlety of a real natural belgian hone. .....JM2¢

What is the cutting power of the stone like? How long before the slurry or the surface dulls? It could just be some kind of fine sedimentary sandstone type hone.

No recomendation Neil , observation ,and exact description. I rarely use oil , liquid soap and water often .
In the past was a mania , everyone used theyre stones with oil , even coticule or thuringians . And the story with the milk and the Cretan hone - i think it is an urban legend . Cretans are oiled stones witch gives them the specific dark color . They impregnate them with machine oil , somethimes even old fried oil , to give the distingtive black color , and because is cheaper .
80 % of the old hones , wich i buy are heavy oiled , sluryed with oil and covered with so called GOO ......
Even after laping you can smel the diesel engine oil on it / M10D /
There was a time that i think this stone was a coticule of some kind , but not so sure now . It is a Fast stone , but not like a coti , the color is similar but not like a coti and the feedback is between coti and slate . BBW reminiscent . I dont know what is it but works well , and they are diferent in grit like the coticules .

It's not sandstone. It's also not molded, it was definitely cut from some mother stone. Strange. I need to do testing in order to see what it has going for it

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Originally Posted by kcb5150

I need to do testing in order to see what it has going for it

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Definitely. Never seen a stone that looks like it that wasn't coticule, and I haven't exactly seen too many large coarse coticules that were intended for tools. Last one I saw was a huge 8x3x1 inch thick sort of beat up stone sold on ebay, and I hope the person buying it wasn't intending to use it on razors.

Speaking to ppl who seemingly have nearly identical stones the performance seems to fall in between a coti and a thuri but it is able to pull an edge back from a more degraded state than a thuri and bring it back to a shave ready state. It sounds fun.

Fed a couple of blades to it, one that needed more of a touch up than a thuri would be up for, and a truly hollow ground 1xl wostenholm as I wanted to see how the sheffield steel reacted. Very interesting hone. It's harder to raise a slurry with the slurry stone than it is on a thuri, but before long you get a strange mustard colored slurry. If I wanted a really heavy slurry, I would probably use something other than the slurry stone. It brought the worn edge back to hht 4. Under 10x magnification, a very compact, consistent scratch pattern. It also managed to clean up some fizz at the toe that you could see under the loupe as well as some oxidation. Wostenholm I put the most plain jane coti edge on it imaginable and then went to this for dilutions to straight water. Again, hht 4 mostly, I'd say 5 in spots. It has more cutting power than any thuri I have had and it seems to be able to get an edge to a very respectable condition. I don't think this stone is as fine as a thuri, but the edges are very very shave ready. I would go so far as to say it is a more useful hone than a thuri as it has more metal removal capability. I went over a spot I shaved yesterday dry just now and it just went through neck stubble effortlessly. I think I will redo the wostenholm and try it tomorrow. I think I can pull a bit more out of that blade as it has been in disuse for ages, plus I am still not familiar with this rock. What I like most is it has feedback. You get a real tactile sensation of the edge smoothing out on the hone as you go so you don't have to play guessing games when you dilute. I need to see if there is any penalty for remaining at that smooth point prior to dilution and if there are any gains to be had. Also has a super earthy smell as you hone. I can say with utter certainty that it is not a coticule. Fun stone.