Thread: Anyone Know This Hone ???

I am going more towards sandstone type such as Dalmore Yellow or on your side of pong Canadian Oilstone.

Originally Posted by Martin103

I see slight layering or banding and orange specks, I would say it's a Hindostan stone, from Indiana.

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Plenty of orange specks, and when dry silvery sparkly specks (less of them) but no banding is apparent to me ...........

Originally Posted by Utopian

I've got a lot of Carborundums and that ain't a Carborundum. It definitely appears to be a natural. That is more-so with these newer photos.

Jimmy, regardless of what it is, the thing I like about it is the fact that some guy used only this rock to maintain his straight razor for years. I continue to maintain a set of seven razors with just a barber hone and like the fact that the continue to work just fine year after year. I could make them "better" with many other hones, but I prefer to leave them "pure."

I hope you will take one or more razors and hone them up on just this rock and see how it works.

+1 ,,,,,,,,,,,,

Originally Posted by Utopian

I hope you will take one or more razors and hone them up on just this rock and see how it works.

Great minds think alike. Had put this Genco Fluid Steel aside because it needed attention, so I did water only, more or less weight of the blade. Did some round trips and tested, then back to the hone. Probably took 50 round trips all told, but it gave me a great shave. Stropped on horsehide BTW.

I'm curious as to whether this hone would be 'better' with oil ? Seems from the rich patina I lapped off it probably was used with oil, but even before lapping water didn't bead up, and I didn't detect any residue of oil. Are sandstones, assuming that is what it is, suited to oil as well as water only ?

Do you have any Smith's honing solution? That would allow you to have some general sense of what honing with oil would be like on it. It's water soluble so it's not a permanent alteration to the hone. Also, because it's water soluble, you can alter its viscosity by diluting it with water.

Originally Posted by Utopian

Do you have any Smith's honing solution? That would allow you to have some general sense of what honing with oil would be like on it. It's water soluble so it's not a permanent alteration to the hone. Also, because it's water soluble, you can alter its viscosity by diluting it with water.

Also Water Glycerine is a potentially substitute solution to get a feeling how honing on oil would be....

...depending how the mixture is set up you can simulate the viscosity or thickness of an oil

Just mailed it back to the owner a couple of hours ago. Thanks to all for the input.