Thread: Holy grail stone?

Originally Posted by Phrank

Your pic of the Escher on the bottom, I have one that looks exactly the same, only have the bottom half of the box - it's blue, same as yours, could the one in my pic be a Barber's Delight? Unless you have the actual box cover, how can you tell?

The other stone in my pic is very yellow, as you can see....

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The labelling "Barbers Delight" belongs to the speial size of 6x2 inch thuringians and a selected quality. I have only seen it so far used by the company Escher&Co and the other companies, that end up in the 1920ths in the Deutsche Schleifmittel AG (DSAG), which were BTC (Bösenberg, Trinks), Pike&Escher and others. Also some Solingen companies that were delivered by Escher&Co or DSAG took over this wording. I have not seen it at any stone or in any cataloque of the Escher&Son company so far. As pointed out elsewhere, Escher&Co and Escher&Son have been total different companies from the mid 19th century on.

By the way - these are my two holy grail stones.
A smaller thuringian which was the personal hone of one of the old thuringian miners - respectively owner of one of the quarries. And a coticule that was surprisingly found at the buttom of an old carpenters tool box - never used.



In the following picture I have added a normal 8 inch Escher and a 7/8 razor blanket, just to show the dimensions of the hones.



The thuringian, an unbelievable yellow green quality with the measurements 17 x 2 3/4 x 6/8 inch (43.1x7x1.8 cm) and a weight of 1.8 kg.
The coticule, a natural combination and personally identified by Maurice Celis as an Old Rock with a lenght of 15 1/8'', 3 5/8''wide and 1 1/8 inch thick (38.5x9.2x2.8 cm) - 2.9 kg heavy weight champion.

That's a great coticule. I am a sucker for a big hone and have been dying for one that size.

I will take it ;-) All please :-)

Originally Posted by Geezer

Ok, I been looking for a long time. Synthetic rocks, Eschers and Coticules I got. But, this at a garage sale finished my HAD! Light Green. Oh yes, final cost $15 with the extra $10 I gave him. They are out there!
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~Richard

You know, I was looking back through this thread because I may have found mine - a finish quality Arkansas. But as I filed through all these pictures of Eschers with labels attached, the thought struck me that I would be completely conflicted. On one hand, you have the a top tier razor hone and as a straight shaver the temptation to put that stone to work would be almost unbearable. But on the other hand, a rarity like a vintage labeled Escher in that good a condition...removing that label would be borderline sacrilege. I honestly wouldn't know what to do with one if I stumbled onto it. I couldn't pass it up, but I pick up hones to use and such a thing clearly belongs in a different type of collection.

One thing is for sure, I clearly need to start carousing garage sales and flea markets.

I was lucky enough to be given an unlabeled lighter stone and a companion hard Coticule of the same form factor when I first started out. Otherwise.....
~Richard

Another Water of Ary, sold mine in 2012 to someone on the forums after posting about it http://straightrazorpalace.com/hones...-oshanter.html
I have a new policy to only sell after I get a duplicate, should have followed that over the years.