Thread: Escher colour poll

Hey all,

So I know there has been discussion about the different colours of escher/thuringian hones. I have a couple of nice small escher/thuringian hones: one is a light yellow/green while the other is a dark blue/green. I'm using the term "escher" losely, as a thuringian is the same type of stone as an escher IMO, just without the name. My two stones are VERY different in colour, yet I found both to be great polishers. I have found my dark escher to be much harder and slower than the yellow/green, but I don't know if that's just my stones and not a trend. But if I were to chose which one I prefer it would be the yellow/green, but I also only have 2 stones to compare! So I hope people with several stones will reply.

So my question is simply: Which colour escher/thuringian hone do you prefer? Feel free to elaborate on your answer.

Thank you for participating in the escher colour poll!

Generally people say yellow green is the best.
i am against this idea .
1 st i have brown escher and i know 100 is better rest of my escher's
2 nd i have dark color escher will do exact job as yellow green escher
Now go figure out.???

Let other people come up and shoot their ideas
WElcome everyone

The Escher factory color labels I have seen are yellow/green, blue/green, light/green and dark blue. I am still trying to figure out which I like best. I would say that they are all good but I have always thought the color labels must have been used to denote performance characteristics.

Unfortunately no one I know of has come across any old catalogs or company literature that might reveal the secret to the Escher color labeling mystery. Tim Zowada collects them and he hones a lot of razors so maybe he will come up with an opinion on what the pecking order might be.

I think I have maybe 4 or 5 actual Eschers. None are brown or yellow green. They all are in the range of blue to green. They all work great and I'll just have to hold my breath until I can find a yellow/green to see if it is better.
I consider that I have no chance for a brown since I have come to believe that they do not exist outside of hi_bud_gl's house.

I suspect that the stones become denser as they go from grey to blue to blue green to green blue to yellow green . The denser the stone, the smaller the particles or grit (?).

I also believe that in the same way some coticules are better than others, so it is with Escher stones.

So in truth I don't think that the colour is the only variable.

In my limited experience (with lots of hones but few razors and therefore relatively few honing sessions), the lighter colours seem on average to be both softer and finer. These attributes may or may not correlate in a similar way to English's notion of density and particle size: harder stones may reluctantly release particles, but when they do, they release them clustered (thus: larger).

If so this could be tested: fresh dark stone slurry should produce noticeably coarser results than dark stone slurry after some honing time (when honing would have broken clusters down), whereas light stone slurry should give a consistent result, equally fine from start to finish. I couldn't tell: I never use Eschers/Thuringians with slurry and my honing sessions are few.

What I can confirm is what others wrote before: the spread in performance between individual stones of the same colour at least equals the average spread between colours.

O, and +1 on

Originally Posted by Utopian

I consider that I have no chance for a brown since I have come to believe that they do not exist outside of hi_bud_gl's house.