Thread: Dragons Tongue Hone anyone?

What does the Dragons tongue hone look like when its wet? Is it a typical blue grey welsh slate, any other colour?

Ive been able to track down locations for half a dozen or so old Welsh hone quarries and I managed to visit one yesterday, near the top of a well known welsh mountain it hadnt been worked for 100 years, the shell of the buildings where they cut the slate are still just about standing with the water wheel pit still visible, it was all very overgrown like a Mayan temple in the jungle and it took me a while to locate it. Next to the ruins was the spoil heap for rejected hones and offcuts, I managed to bring a reasonable amount away, despite protests from my back, I probably shouldnt have been quite so greedy, a bit of slate soon gets heavy!

The stones are not what I would normally expect of Welsh slate, they dont have the usual easy cleavage planes that made slate a natural roofing material and the fractured surface in many of the specimens has a vitreous lustre, kinda glassy and greasy somewhat like schist but this stuff is harder! When dry it is dark grey but when wet it takes on a greenish hue with some lovely banding and fine mottling from some black mineral maybe biotite mica but Im not sure, the banding is reminiscent of my Chinese 12k. Having got my specimens home I realised why a lot of this stuff was on the spoil heap, they didnt cut it and throw it away without good reason it will be a challenge to find a really good hone without faults from this lot but Im hopeful I have enough to get at least one. So far Ive only been able to cut a slurry stone with my small capacity wet saw, enough to examine a lapped surface though, its hard, fine grained, uniform and glazes easily. I dont know how Im going to get this stuff cut! I'll try and post a picture later. It occured to me that it could be what was generically referred to as cutlers green stone?