Thread: 1$ estate sale find, What is it? P.S. mother in-law bought it for me!

Here are some daylight photos.

Wow, weird stone..... I'd say it's man made but that uneven line of the two layers says not.....

It does look like a coti, I'd say if you want to double your money ........ but it is against the rules ......

On my monitor, the daylight photos appear to show a blue tint. Does it have a blue tint? Some synthetic hones DO have irregular borders so that alone does not guarantee that it is a natural hone.

Originally Posted by Utopian

On my monitor, the daylight photos appear to show a blue tint. Does it have a blue tint? Some synthetic hones DO have irregular borders so that alone does not guarantee that it is a natural hone.

It kind of reminds me of a vintage Norton synthetic I had years ago, but on my monitor everything is tan or brown in the photo. It is very uniform in the sides/edges for a natural. Unfortunately I don't seem to have pix of the stone, but here is the box and insert that came with it ;

Well, in natural light, it doesn't have any blue that I can see. It is kinda a light brown/putty color with a similar color back of what appears to be sandstone or brown carborundum. And if it weren't for the unevenness of the layers I would say man made as the working side is so uniform. All my other stones are man made except for a welsh slate type finisher. I have no experience with coti's or any of the other fine naturals, so I would know one if you hit me in the head with it. Thanks for all the input, I'm going to take it to the Seattle group meeting in Sept., see what the consensus is there.
Thanks Todd

Nice find for an estate sale. Wonder if there were any razors before she got there.

Originally Posted by Utopian

On my monitor, the daylight photos appear to show a blue tint. Does it have a blue tint? Some synthetic hones DO have irregular borders so that alone does not guarantee that it is a natural hone.

As an old time photographer (yeah: From the old days of E6 colour slides that is) I can tell you a few things about lights colors. Standard film was balanced to 5500k (the light of the color of an iridium bar heated to 5500 K). This matches roughly the sun light, and electronic flash as well (probably 6000K for the later). Cloudy days are "blue-ish-er" than sunlight (sometimes 12000K). We used to place filters on our lenses to compensate for this.

Indoors lights were very varied. You can browse the web for tungsten (incandescent), mercury vapor, and such. You can even find for fluorescent light but it is not the same from one lamp to the next one, or through one lamps lifetime, or even during the hz period of mono-phase current. Usually greenish but kind of unpredictable.

Returning back from those days, you can now set your camera up for "automatic" light balance (the brains of you camera try to guess the light source and compensate for it; and most of the times hit the target) or "manual" setting (you adjust it manually... when you remember to).

Rgds.