Does anyone recognize this hone?

Back in the seventies when I was a kid my dad bought a sharpening business. It was primarily for saws, belsaw machines, a carbide sharpener etc but one of the things included in it was this hone which is in a cheese box. It's 10 3/4" long, 3 3/4" across the face and 3 1/4" tall. you'll kindly have to pardon my illiteracy about hones. I'm assuming, I think correctly, that the sides, which are bluish in color (2nd picture), are not actually sharpening surfaces just a substrate. He told my brother and I at the time not to use that to sharpen knives or other blades because it was made for sharpening razors but I never really knew anything beyond what he said.
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Again pardon my ignorance but it appears to be the same on both cutting surfaces but I'm not certain. I'm assuming, based on the little I know about stones and it's age, that it's probably an oil stone. I'm also assuming that it's a man-made stone because of the fact that it seems like it has a different substrate in the middle than on the top and bottom side plus it looks somewhat like poured concrete. Any help with information on it would be appreciated. Thanks in advance for any help.
Paul.

I cant help but i love looking at old stones. That thing looks like a concrete brick! I will be watching to see what it is.

Me too! Watching!

I would take a shaving razor and give it a whirl. See what it does. Compare scratch patterns with known grit stones and try to get an idea what it may be capable of doing.

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Originally Posted by Bill31521

I would take a shaving razor and give it a whirl. See what it does. Compare scratch patterns with known grit stones and try to get an idea what it may be capable of doing.

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I've actually run a razor across it some. I don't have a microscope or even a jeweler's glass to see it up close but it left the edge rather shiny like it looks after the pyramid progression or after the 12k stone. Again, I am quite new to honing and only really know how to follow directions from what I've read.

paul scrub it maybe, soak it with some simple green so we can see its true colors....

it will prolly need some lapping to get to really sing

....now i have hone envy

it looks like it is a white-ish hone.... which might it narrow down

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Originally Posted by biglou13

paul scrub it maybe, soak it with some simple green so we can see its true colors....

it will prolly need some lapping to get to really sing

....now i have hone envy

it looks like it is a white-ish hone.... which might it narrow down

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Okay. I'll try that and report back. Actually I think I did try to clean it with some Dawn and plain water but not aggressively.

My very very wild guess is its some kind of ark. i have a #1 norton washita that has similar look which and would fit type of business

UPDATE:
Okay, so I did The Simple Green cleaning. Scrubbed it with a brush and The Simple Green which did clean some dirty looking stuff off of it but didn't seem to change it's appearance very much. I then used a peice of sanding...

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whatever you want to call it that's made for sanding drywall that I have used on bellied hones before I had a flattening stone. That didn't really seem to change its appearance much either although it did seem a little smoother... I think, unless it was just cleaner. I should mention that this thing is smoother to the touch and harder feeling than my 12k Sharpton. It's smooth like granite.
So then I decided to use my Norton flattening stone to try to lap it a little and I think it lapped my flattening stone.
Nothing really seemed to change the way it looked very much and it didn't seem to take anything off of it. I have no idea how hard that thing is but the flattening stone is silicon carbide so it has to be harder than that if I got my chemistry lesson right... doesn't it???
I did however take some pictures of it wet which seemed to enrich the colors some. With the water on it if you look at it with the light hitting it from a certain angle it has a sparkle to it, or rather IN it, on all four sides.
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I don't know if you can see it from the pictures or not. I also don't know if you can see from the pictures or not but the sides have a striation to them like a trowel leaves on concrete. Somebody mentioned that maybe it's an "ark" which I assume means an Arkansas Stone (again disclaiming my ignorance). I'm pretty darn sure this is a man-made stone but, again... ignorance.
What's harder than silicon carbide, would that leave more than dimond? Certainly that can't be a daimond stone can it?
:shrug:
Hoping some of this means something to somebody. Meanwhile I'm still scratching my head here.
Paul

AMENDMENT TO THE UPDATE:
I went back to look at this stone again after it had dried some and I noticed that it's sparkles even more now that it's not wet which I don't believe I ever noticed before. I turned the stone over and over looking at all the sides and noticed that the one cutting surface did not seem to sparkle like the other one. Now I can see that it's not actually sparkly on all four long sides but only on the one and spilling over onto the top part of the sides adjacent to it. Running my hand over it, I also noticed it (duller side) is nowhere near as smooth. It then occurred to me that I had only run the flattening stone over one side so again I sprayed it with the hose and ran the flattening stone over the other, duller side. On this side the slurry that came up was from the stone and it is a creamy tannish gray. Originally (on the other side) the slurry that came up was from the flattening stone and it was that same dull green. Lapping this duller side with the flattening stone left a much softer more opaque texture to it while the other side that had dried is barely even scratched where I had run the flattening stone over it. So apparently this hone has a honing side and a finishing side if I'm saying that right (once again disclaiming the ignorance). Doesn't it?
I sure hope this rings some bells to somebody because now I'm really intrigued by this thing and being that it belonged to my now late father I would really like to know more about it.
Thanks.
Paul

PS: a little dirty pool here: attaching a picture of my father fresh out of boot camp in early 1944. Figured maybe it would compel some people.

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I have a soft Arkansas that is colored like that.

Well, they say patience is a virtue but it's a very boring one. I've also heard that the west wasn't won on patience. I guess the trick is to know when to jump and when to stand. Since I didn't get advice on what lubricant to use or any more guesses about what it was I decided to jump. I wet it with water and made a slurry on the course side which I never do. I didn't know really what to do so I just winged it by running the pyramid progression with the opposing sides. I found pretty early into it that it seemed a much larger difference between them than the usual 4k/8k but what the heck right? There's only one way to know for sure, damn the torpedos, no guts no glory and all that sort of rot. At the end and after some stropping it didn't look a great deal different through the glass than my sharpest one currently that I honed, stropped and shaved with yesterday but when I did my usual preshave (exactly as usual so as to keep it a control factor) it was not quite there. I did not have time to finish it with the 12k or anything else so I left it for later and finished the shave with another razor.
It seems to me that it needs more finishing so I may stick with the fine side and see if it will polish it out on it's own. I'm not versed enough to try to judge the grit ranges but if it was that or the firing squad I would guess less than 1k...600-700 maybe and 7k-8k...ish...???...I guess. If my life were in the balance but otherwise I'd try not to bet my paycheck on it. Boy that sparkly.side is so hard. I wonder if it could be tungsten carbide...ya think??? It, the sparkly part that is, seems grayish I guess or plain white maybe when the light hits it and makes it shine but not tinged with a hew that I can tell. I'll try to get some good quality close up shots post them and I guess try to lap it and see what the slurry looks like (would that be helpful?) if I can do that without ruining my flattening stone. I mean it didn't look like there was any slurry but that from the flattening stone when I tried it before.
Sure would like to hear some opinions.

Sparkly... may be silica

Experiment with lube. I’ve tried oil, ballistol(mineral oil)/water, water only, soapy water, even dry?

Look at box it will give you clues to past lube...
With out seeing it closer ... I’m guessing oil.

Are you saying you did not finish on smoothest surface?
I doubt a a stone can have a wide range of grit....
Each side could be lapped to different grit
Was finest side possibly burnished, might indicated the finishing side.
I’m testing a ark(ish) with on side lapped to 1200 and one side lapped to 500 .
I have a another stone that that tends load up and it gets super fine when that happens.

With many stones raising a slurry may not be pnecessary, and may increase “grit”

I’m a little confused by last post did you finish on finest side?
With progressively lighter strokes?

What grit is your flattening stone?

Have you checked stone “flatness” with a decent straight edge?

Try testing again with less variables....
Try finishing on finest side, do not raise slurry prior to, try oil, and finish with progressively lighter passes.

Then next test try burnishing finest surface then test again.

Maybe have a more experienced honer hone same razor on it.

If dad said it’s a razor stone i’d Trust that, And work on figuring it out.

Thanks biglou,
I may have gotten a little long winded and gotten abreast of the focus. What I was hoping is by describing the hone and how it looks and performs someone would say, "oh yeah, that's a so and so hone made by what's his face in 19XX or 18XX made out of whatchamacallit. That is an oil/water stone, xk grit on side a. xxk on side b...etc."
I don't know how to do that partial quote with comments in between so I'll just try to cover it all in monologue... briefly. I did use both sides but I did the pyramid progression: 20 laps on side a then 20 on b, 15 on a then 15 on b. 10 on a then 10 on be etc.
Someone suggested cleaning it up with simple green and that helped make it easier to see the characteristics. This stone is absolutely, positivily man made. 100+% sure on that. One side is harder, much harder with a reflective mineral added to the aggregate. Maybe it was how I did it or maybe it was because of the wide variance between the two sides. I'm not well versed.on lapping, burnishing slurries or anything else with hones. Not really sure what grit my flattening stone is. It's a green silicon carbide Norton flattening stone. That's really all I know. I'm trying to figure it all out. Whatever happened the end result was that it didn't leave the razor well polished at the end. I guess I didn't say it right but I can experiment and try to polish it out more.
I wa justs hoping to find out information but maybe I'm at a dead end. I appreciate all your help though. Maybe I should try to take it over to the department of material sciences at UF. At least maybe they can tell me what it's made out of not that I guess any of this really matters. I was just curious about more information on my dad's hone.

It can take lots of digging to find out some of this stuff.

Keep going and let us know if you find anything so then the rest of us don't have to do the digging!

You said your father had a belsaw sharpening business. Maybe a group related to that would be the place to look?

what is the writing on the box?

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Originally Posted by CrownCork

what is the writing on the box?

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Mel-O-Bit Pasteurized Process Cheese American

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Originally Posted by PaulFLUS

Mel-O-Bit Pasteurized Process Cheese American

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lol...A Velveeta Hone

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Originally Posted by 32t

It can take lots of digging to find out some of this stuff.

Keep going and let us know if you find anything so then the rest of us don't have to do the digging!

You said your father had a belsaw sharpening business. Maybe a group related to that would be the place to look?

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Yeah I've done that and continue to do so. I wish I had the hourly I charge in my profession for all the time I have into searching. He didn't exactly buy a belsaw business. He bought out a guy who owned a sharpening business. Some of what he had was belsaw machines. The rest was an assortment of other things, among them stones (mostly carborundum and other knife sharpening stones) of which this was the only razor related thing.
Dad never used this stone to the best of my knowledge. He bought the business in circa 1974. As he got old he sold off most of his business but he kept this hone for whatever reason. It sat mostly if not totally unused for 44 years, the last few of it in storage unit until I became more interested in razors and pulled it out and dusted it off... literally.

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....

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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....

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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 info@geology.ufl.edu. 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.

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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.

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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.

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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:

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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:

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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...:thinking:...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 :gaah: 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.

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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.

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Hmmmm...
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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.

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Originally Posted by PaulFLUS

Hmmmm...

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Hey PaulFLUS I actually have an XRay flourenscence machine set up in my shed - do it for ya for cheap. Send me the hone and $500 USD - email Jimbo@never-been-convicted-of-fraud.com for my deets! :p

James.

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Originally Posted by Jimbo

Hey PaulFLUS I actually have an XRay flourenscence machine set up in my shed - do it for ya for cheap. Send me the hone and $500 USD - email Jimbo@never-been-convicted-of-fraud.com for my deets! :p

James.

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I'm kinda glad that I wrote a joke and backed off because this would have beat it so hard I'd retroactively fail clown school.

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Originally Posted by Jimbo

Hey PaulFLUS I actually have an XRay flourenscence machine set up in my shed - do it for ya for cheap. Send me the hone and $500 USD - email Jimbo@never-been-convicted-of-fraud.com for my deets! :p

James.

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:roflmao:rofl2::roflmao:rofl2:
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...wooooo...that was a good one!

So to resurrect this old thread, I got the urge to play with this thing again a while back and while I wouldn't say I have "mastered" it I have learned some tricks to using it successfully. I've been able to go from can't cut open a letter with it to finish with pretty pleasing results. (Actually I started this post a few weeks ago. Since then I have gotten spectacular results.)

As always I am still playing with it and learning it's boundaries and potential. So far what I have found is that there are some tricks to making it do the various tasks. First, to go from butter knife to passing the TNT and shaving arm hair the trick is to slurry the "low grit side."
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I put that in quotes because it is lower than the other side but still not very low. The feedback is like the 4k-6k range but it cuts much faster with thick slurry. After thinning the slurry out with a spray bottle (water) it performs towards the higher end of that, maybe even 8k. I've slurried with a diamond plate but have recently been using a small soft ark on a block which you can just see in that pic.


After working up the mud>clear water progression and jointing a few times to get a clean bevel I do some no weight strokes to smooth and polish. I should also mention that I have been stropping on canvas between stages and doing some spine leading strokes at the end then stropping again before flipping the toe breaker over. By the way I am even more careful not to drop this one not so much because of fear of breaking it but for fear of breaking my foot or whatever else it falls on.

On the other side I tried slurry but I found I didn't need the intermediate stage. The first side is high enough grit range to cover the mid range. As with the first side I have been using water so far. On this side though, I have so far been using glycerin and diluting that out.
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As I say I'm still playing with it but what has worked like a champ so far is doing 20 to 30 strokes then stropping on CrOx pasted strop then going back and doing 20-30 strokes etc. etc. diluting as I go. Even minus that step it gives great results but I honed a Shumate Tungsteel today up to finish with the hone-strop-hone-strop-hone (ending on the stone) method and it was actually too sharp. As before at the end I did a few spine leading, no weight strokes at the very end. I still don't really know what I want to know about this big ol' honkin' thing like age, maker, material, what mineral is in the finish side, grit ranges but I do know that it is, as I hoped, a start to finish one stone hone and it can take an edge to exceptional levels without going to another finisher. The next step to try it with oil. That is what it was soaked with when I got it. That should be interesting but water has been great so far.

Stay tuned for more news.

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Originally Posted by PaulFLUS

So to resurrect this old thread, I got the urge to play with this thing again a while back and while I wouldn't say I have "mastered" it I have learned some tricks to using it successfully. I've been able to go from can't cut open a letter with it to finish with pretty pleasing results. (Actually I started this post a few weeks ago. Since then I have gotten spectacular results.)

As always I am still playing with it and learning it's boundaries and potential. So far what I have found is that there are some tricks to making it do the various tasks. First, to go from butter knife to passing the TNT and shaving arm hair the trick is to slurry the "low grit side."
Attachment 346607

I put that in quotes because it is lower than the other side but still not very low. The feedback is like the 4k-6k range but it cuts much faster with thick slurry. After thinning the slurry out with a spray bottle (water) it performs towards the higher end of that, maybe even 8k. I've slurried with a diamond plate but have recently been using a small soft ark on a block which you can just see in that pic.


After working up the mud>clear water progression and jointing a few times to get a clean bevel I do some no weight strokes to smooth and polish. I should also mention that I have been stropping on canvas between stages and doing some spine leading strokes at the end then stropping again before flipping the toe breaker over. By the way I am even more careful not to drop this one not so much because of fear of breaking it but for fear of breaking my foot or whatever else it falls on.

On the other side I tried slurry but I found I didn't need the intermediate stage. The first side is high enough grit range to cover the mid range. As with the first side I have been using water so far. On this side though, I have so far been using glycerin and diluting that out.
Attachment 346608

As I say I'm still playing with it but what has worked like a champ so far is doing 20 to 30 strokes then stropping on CrOx pasted strop then going back and doing 20-30 strokes etc. etc. diluting as I go. Even minus that step it gives great results but I honed a Shumate Tungsteel today up to finish with the hone-strop-hone-strop-hone (ending on the stone) method and it was actually too sharp. As before at the end I did a few spine leading, no weight strokes at the very end. I still don't really know what I want to know about this big ol' honkin' thing like age, maker, material, what mineral is in the finish side, grit ranges but I do know that it is, as I hoped, a start to finish one stone hone and it can take an edge to exceptional levels without going to another finisher. The next step to try it with oil. That is what it was soaked with when I got it. That should be interesting but water has been great so far.

Stay tuned for more news.

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Figured out what is it yet?

Not what I had hoped to know. I guess I have been distracted by other shiny things but I also have rather resigned myself to the fact that I may never know age, brand or material. It may have to be enough to learn how to use it and be satisfied with that. One nice thing is it reminds me of my Dad every time I use it.

What I am looking forward to is using it for initial bevelset on razors I make. Those long ponderous strokes cut well and quickly.