Quote Originally Posted by SirMike View Post
The sets I have are cheapo's from Blade HQ and come in a wooden box. The Soft and Hard came as a "kit" with oil in a wooden box and the Black "surgical" came separate but also in a wooden box. All stones are about 4x2x1/2 roughly! After reading your post, I am guessing that these won't be any good so I shouldn't bother with them at all!

Thx.
Always check! You never know. At one point, I assumed all black arkansas stones were good stone, but several people have told me those small stones were not nearly as fine cutting as known good stones.

They're novaculite, your stones, so you can't really hurt anything trying them out. Since I haven't tried them myself, I don't know if the people who mentioned the stones didn't condition them right or if they're just bad. I make that point only because the NW "black trans" and the dans black stones as well as translucents from various manufacturers never get bad press.