Thread: Speckled Hone, ID please

Dear community,

recently I've came accross this interesting stone and would like to know the name of this species.
the stone looks gre-greenish and is speckled by greyish-brownish spots.

Here is how it looks like after lapping:








Dimentions: 18.5cm x 4.7cm x 1.7cm. I am sure it was larger as it looks quite used and worn.

First experience:
The surface of the stone feels quite grainy to the fingers, compared to synthetics I would say bellow 1000 JIS.
Also while honing a razor it feels quite grainy and coarse.

But the stone is actually functioning lot finer, it seems to cover large medium grid range, perhabs someting from 3k up to 8-9k. It reminds me to coticules I have.
Finished my testing razor under running water and after stropping on linen and leather I get a solid HHT4 even though it looks terrible scratchy.

My first Idea it is a some special kind of Dalmore Blue but it does not look like a sand stone, I'd say its some sort of slate.
It is harder than my Thuringian stones but way softer than my purple wesh and CNAT.
It produces milky looking nearly white slurry which turns grey very soon (again: reminds me on coticule).
It does not autoslurry.

Here are some pictures of the surface made through the microscope (160x):




Here are some of the razor Edge (160x):





Any idea what can iot be?

Many thanks in advance

Regards
Philipp

Hi all,

I've taken a bit more time and done some more experimenting with the sprenkled Hone.

Created some creamy slurry using Diamond pocket plate and have done normal X-Strokes with very little pressure.
The slurry have turned dark after about 50 x-strokes.
The edge looks less scratchy compared to my first session:


Next I've refreshed the slurry and performed spine-leading X-strokes.
Again, very low pressure. The slurry turned dark soon. After linen stropping passed HHT3 to HHT4.


I've refreshed the slurry and back-stroking for 2 times and achieved more refinement: HHT4


Then tried back-strokes on water only --> no to negligible refinement: still HHT4


OK, now I've tried soapy water and back-strokes --> the edge could be further refined.

After stropping on linen and leather I could measure HHT4 to HHT5.

The test shave was quite decent, bur bellow my own reference:
+ quite mellow feeling to skeen, bot not the same as I know from JNAT
- not the absolute effortless shaving
- the keenes was slightly below of my other finishers
- after shave burning was little above my reference level.

Seems like this grainy coarse-looking-and-feeling boy can at least cover the prefinishing stage of razor sharpening.

Looking forward to more experinemting

Best Regards

Philipp

It's probably Quartzite or some similar mineral. Peter had found a stone really similar to yours, that was mined in his city until some decades ago. Looked coarse, but it was getting finer and finer the more you used it, and a really hard stone. Your stone looks a bit darker in color, other than that it looks the same.

Hi Vasilis,

thank you so much for the hint!
I‘ve searched for the definition of the quartzite and indeed its properties does match to my stone.

Here are sone links:
https://youtu.be/bD119opSSOQ
https://geology.com/rocks/quartzite.shtml

Best regards

Philipp

Kinda looks like a Tam o shatner in that one spot

I have a number of Tam O'Shanter hones and none of them look like yours.

Just my 2¢

With this typical inclusions I would vote for a grey-green Frankonian hone. Where do you get it?

Hi all,
thanks a lot for your hints.

@Hatzicho: two of this stone have been thrown out at Germans eBay couple of weeks back. The first one was in razor-stone-size like 16x8 or something similar. I‘ve missed it, so I‘ve focused on this one. Both were selled as „Slate from Thüringan Mountains“ or similar.
Actually first this stone has seemed to me being quite hard but actually it does autoslurry when I apply more pressure. Recently I’ve honed a japanese plane blade on it, the waight of the blade and the pressure I‘ve applied to hold the angle let it autoslurry.
The stone is fast like hell and still amazingly fine.

Regards

Philipp

Some of my Frankonians, you can see the one on the right shows the exact patterns as your stone: