Quote Originally Posted by doorsch View Post
Its nothing special and i dont see what these informations bring any advantage....

Its known that a lot of vintage and also actual quarries deliver products of a general use (roofing slate, garden pebbles, etc.). It was always needed to run a business...

Many of the quarries would not have operated sucessfully if they would not have sold these types of products.

German Slate was used for all types of Slate Products (like slate pencils and slate tiles) besides that it delivered good razor hones

Coticules are actually re-used for garden pebbles for decoration.

https://youtu.be/tYqMq4RmIvg

BBW is re-used for general purposes. As it is today used for sharpening razors and knives.

Vermont Slate is produced for slate tiles, on the other hand it can be well used for finishing razors

Welsh slate is used for roofing slates, slate tiles, adress signs, etc...so it is used for honing.
Sebastian is right.
In an interesting conversation I had with Maurice in the coticule workshop, he told me that about half the income from the quarry comes from the useless stone above/below/between the coticule/Belgian blue stone layers, with the other half coming from the stones.
That material is a formation with a reddish, from black-deep brown to orange color, and is used in brickworks and general building/infrastructure industry among other things, I'm sure others here in the forum know more details.
As for the use of BBW as roofing tiles, or slabs used for building, it's not that easy to find it; there is a limited availability from what I saw, the wear resistance is not optimal (coticule is a really sensitive stone, it gets damaged really easily if left outside the earth, and our homes), Belgian blue is not the best option out there. Extracting it and cutting it is also hard, especially without power tools... pretty much any hard slate out there would be a better option. I of course, don't doubt that it was used, but I don't think there are entire villages with houses made out of that stone for walls and roof tiles.
On the other hand, the above material that is useless as a hone also comes in... same colors with a Belgian blue stone, there is a huge quantity of it unlike our two loved types of stones from there and should have better wear resistance, so, maybe some of these roof tiles were pieces of that material.