Thread: The tale about "The German Hickory" Hone

Man, with 100 people at one mill working all day to produce them and possibly other mills, it would seem some should still survive.

IF anyone knows what they have?

Lots of it out there, apparently. I see flooring and furniture made of it. Slabs can be purchased as well.

This is interesting; What is Petrified Wood? How Does it Form?

I think these old articles have to be taken in context. They could say what they wanted. For example I had never heard of the word adamant used in that context. Here is what I found.

nounarchaic
1.
a legendary rock or mineral to which many, often contradictory, properties were attributed, formerly associated with diamond or lodestone.

They could say or write what they wanted with little or any controls.

I can certainly see someone treating hickory in the ground in a way that took 8 years but it certainly isn't petrified in the way we today understand that word.

Thinking in how I would post this today at SRP I envision saying that I am using a pasted piece of hard wood.....

I can't imagine wood petrifying in 8 years, but my college Geology elective, fascinating as it was, only taught me so much-loved that class and the subject in general. I was with my family in the Petrified National Forest in the summer of '11 on one of our big Western National Parks trips. I'll never forget the museum where huge wildly-colored pieces of it were polished to glass-like smoothness. I don't remember the exact geology of how it happens, the minerals involved, etc. I also remember driving all over Utah, which is a geologist's paradise, looking at all the fascinating rocks and wondering how they might work as hones.

Originally Posted by 32t

I think these old articles have to be taken in context. They could say what they wanted. For example I had never heard of the word adamant used in that context. Here is what I found.

nounarchaic
1.
a legendary rock or mineral to which many, often contradictory, properties were attributed, formerly associated with diamond or lodestone.

They could say or write what they wanted with little or any controls.

I can certainly see someone treating hickory in the ground in a way that took 8 years but it certainly isn't petrified in the way we today understand that word.

Thinking in how I would post this today at SRP I envision saying that I am using a pasted piece of hard wood.....

I am sure you probably have heard it used in that context, just didn't realize it. I'm certain almost everyone has heard of or read the term 'adamantine' - guess where it's derived from...

Originally Posted by eKretz

I am sure you probably have heard it used in that context, just didn't realize it. I'm certain almost everyone has heard of or read the term 'adamantine' - guess where it's derived from...

I am very adamant that I have never heard it used in that context!

adjective
1.
refusing to be persuaded or to change one's mind.

I have heard it used that way many times.

This got me thinking that I should pull an old oak fence post from the ground and see how it hones.................

Just to clear things up a bit. It is completely possible to petrify wood in a few days with modern techniques!

The process involves soaking the wood in an acid bath for 2 days, then in a silica bath for another 2 days and letting them air dry. Then you pop them into a furnace filled with argon and pumped up to 1,400C for a few hours and BOOM!(hopefully not literally) You have yourself some petrified wood!

Originally Posted by knott00

Just to clear things up a bit. It is completely possible to petrify wood in a few days with modern techniques!

The process involves soaking the wood in an acid bath for 2 days, then in a silica bath for another 2 days and letting them air dry. Then you pop them into a furnace filled with argon and pumped up to 1,400C for a few hours and BOOM!(hopefully not literally) You have yourself some petrified wood!

I looked this up and the experiments used a 1 cm cube. Hardly enough for a hone.....

Probably easier for me to drive to SD.

I imagine the process is a lot simpler or at least faster from "petrifying" the wood.
First of all, it's wood. Wood has pores, plenty of different types, and one of these is specific to this type of tree and desirable, so, "German hickory" it is.
You supposedly can't get that kind of "hone" from anywhere but these locations, so either the soil, climate or both are important (I doubt the wood has to be from there as well).
We end up with wood, in the earth, that absorbs water. Some silica (and not only, as a base) minerals, the hard kind, do dissolve in water (pH and temperature is also a factor) in tiny quantities; when that wood dries, they get trapped inside it. It then reabsorbs water saturated in these hard silica minerals, and... it dries again. The cycle continues for eight years, and you end up with something that started as wood but can polish steel. A simple enough theory (wood itself contains silicon oxide, but the quantity of it is not worth mentioning) that can work, and be repeated in a lab, without having to wait 8 years.
I'll get it copyrighted
Anyway, that kind of wood is somewhat famous, and, if anyone has a sample, I would be interested in some photos with a microscope, high magnification (if I'm right, the crystallization as the water dries in these pores will be characteristic)

That makes sense, I suppose.
I had thought to say it, yet could not quite put it together to type it!

You have put it out there in a fine fashion.
Proper tree (I suspect a particular part?), and process, location, time allotted.

Still. Burying a crop of wooden hones for 8 years having gained experience from how many years?
Not common. Nor common knowledge, either
Seems we should know a lot more about them?