Thread: Does anyone recognize this hone?

Originally Posted by biglou13

i'm dissapointed that its not stone made my mother nature. (i'm still holding out that it is)

i have a stone that glints on on side (silca?) and is shiny and hard, i lapped to 1200 SiC grit. the other side is rough. just because there is variance doesn't mean its not a natural stone....

unknown stone, with minimal knowledge/experience (no insult intended) will most likely result in poorly honed razor.... i'm optimistic that it is a fine razor hone.... can be made into one

you should try an meet up with someone more knowledgable, and get you fast tracked....

Well unless Mother nature set down a bluish concrete type substrate and then poured even amounts of different type strata on either side of it, one harder than the other complete with swirls under trowel marks from smoothing then I'm going to have to say this is man-made. I know you see some funny things in nature including sedimentary rock that has laid down in layers and could be cut to have two distinct sides but if you hold this thing in your hand and look at it I think you'd agree with me.
I think it cuts just fine and is a fine razor hone now I just need to play around with it until I figure out how to use it. Of course I'm appreciative of all the help about it's character and instruction. I suppose I would definitely need that at some point. Initially at least though, the whole purpose of this post and what I'm after is to try to learn something about it historically. Maker, production date, material, all the interesting little stuff. I don't even really care about a market or collector value because to me the fact that I got it from my father makes it invaluable.
By the way, no insult taken

Well, here's something. I called the Department of Geological Sciences main number at the University of Florida here in town. I told the woman that answered what I had and was wondering if someone could take a look at it. She told me her suggestion was to take some pictures of it, maybe set a ruler next to it and send it in an email to [email protected]. She said they have "a list" that they send it out to and if anyone can help they'll email me back.
It's not exactly what I was hoping for. I was hoping that I could take it by there and someone could look at it on the spot and tell me something about it. If they had any ideas about what it was made of and if in fact it is man-made which I already know the answer to. It sounded like they have requests like this a lot so perhaps that would be helpful to someone else out there in forum land

Well, I did a value assessment, not to be confused with a cost assessment (i.e. I got this hone from my father and have $0 in it. I bought my flattening stone for about $50. Therefore the hone cost me much less than 1/50th what the flattening stone did however I can buy a new flattening stone. The hone is invaluable to me and irreplaceable.) I decided to do whatever it took to lap it and remove the glaze from the fine side.



This is what it looks like now. You can really see the mineral.in it now.
Also, I showed it to a friend who is a jeweler and he said he believes that it is manmade and made of a made/synthetic mineral. He also pointed out that you can see a seam on both sides. Furthermore he said it could very well be diamond but he can't say for sure because it is too big to fit under his scope. I could have it analysed but it would mean destroying a peice of it. I did however keep the water with the slurry from lapping it so theoretically I could filter out the solids and put it under the scope.
Maybe I'm beating a dead horse here but I just really want to get information on it and I'm hoping knowing what it is made of will help. Also hoping a new picture will help someone recognize it.
Still love to hear some opinions.

Use it and see where it fits into your progression. Seems to me it's man-made. If you want to honor its legacy just use it! That's what I would do.

Originally Posted by Bill31521

Use it and see where it fits into your progression. Seems to me it's man-made. If you want to honor its legacy just use it! That's what I would do.

You're probably right Bill, in fact I know you are. Maybe I should let it go and maybe I'm being quixotic. I am actually doing what you suggest but let me ask you a question. If your father left it to you wouldn't you want to know something about it? Maybe that's not fair because you're not me and I don't mean that to be a smart alec. I will just say that I want to know about it for the same reason that I want to know about this:


That's my Dad's ship that he was sunk on after the Normandy invasion which he was in. It's something that I can hold onto that I can remember him by because I'm proud of him, of who he was and what he did. I have 2 stones to remember him by, the one I'm trying to find out about and this one:



I would like to know 2 things. History about it for my own curiosity and what it is so I can use it properly because that is what he instilled in me.
I'm not trying to rebuff or rebutt you. I just want to help everyone understand why I'm not done looking yet.

Well......it's funny looking back on your own posts after time has passed. Since posting this I have not really learned any more about the stone but it doesn't really matter to me so much about the maker or history etc. anymore. I have learned more about honing and stones than I knew then. There is another post about this hone somewhere when I played with it again a while back. This was probably made to be a one stone hone and I have toyed with it some trying to figure it out. I then got sidetracked with a batch of arks that Dad had and all that goes with that. Man, was I green back then. Not to say that I am an expert now or that it was so long ago but I wish I knew then what little I know now.
I will probably write a new post about it once I get a handle on it but I have managed to go bevel set to finish with it. I played around with slurries and different lubricants and so far I have had the best luck with water and mixes of water and glycerin and with Smith's and also with WD-40 or with dish detergent. The soft side cuts pretty fast and the finish side is rather slow but I can make it leave the bevel frosty like an ark does with a diamond plate slurry (on this stone) then make it shiny like an 8k does with just water (again on this stone). It's still a work in progress but with now having a little more knowledge of hones, better honing techniques (mainly moving past the pyramid progression and using a more realistic stone progression) and a better understanding of how to flatten, lap and burnish I think I can come up with a process to take an edge from butter knife dull to dead keen with the one stone. I'll keep you posted but it is definitely a joy to hone with this gigantic thing.

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A simple test ... pour some vinegar on it. If it bubbles then it is made from cement plus some abrasive.
A few years ago I translated an old German recipe for making hones. They used cement plus a sandstone they had available, 10% by weight.
The vinegar test was shown to me by a former SRP member named Sham from Kansas City, Kansas. I was trying to identify what I thought was a Coticule, a very fine, slow cutting hone. He put some vinegar on it, the stone fizzled ( fine little bubbles after a few minutes wait), he said that is a cement hone.
Give it a try.

Thanks for the memory, Randy-Sham honed my 1st razor for me back in the day. Too bad his forum didn't really get going, as it was becoming a hot-bed of knowledge on hones in itself.

If you don’t mind paying for it, an XRay fluorescence test might tell you something. It’s non-destructive and fast, but I’d expect that you’re looking at $600-1200.

Originally Posted by Steve56

If you don’t mind paying for it, an XRay fluorescence test might tell you something. It’s non-destructive and fast, but I’d expect that you’re looking at $600-1200.

Hmmmm...