Thread: Mississippi Stone?

Originally Posted by 0livia

Fede, 800 - 1000 FEPA or JIS?

I'll ask to the guy how he rated the grit of his stone..

Originally Posted by kingreverent

Hi Bud Gl,
Sorry, I tried to upload the picture many times. It doesn't work. You can only see if you're logged in. I did it, it's the same way as in SRP. Once you choose your username and password you'll receive an email to confirm by clicking on the link.
I don't speak Italian but I wanted to see how our Italian brothers are honing and stroping their str8 razors.
I think, maybe I'm wrong, that they're waaay behind. Their forum isn't as elaborated as SRP and our German forums.
They've excellent shaving products, shaving soaps, aftershaves, colognes, but are using mostly their double edges and other 5-blades monsters.
Their soaps and toiletries are the reflection of Italy's extremely high culture, 'savoir-vivre' and excellent taste.
I couldn't find the Valobra soap in Tuscany. But I visited the Santa Maria Novella in Florence and bought some excellent stuff.
I found Proraso in almost every corner in Tuscany, but they never heard of Cella soap...If a asked for Valobra soap they offered me the Proraso.
I think they don't have the access to good and modern honing stones, instead they are talking about a Mississippi stone, a defunct stone that even Americans don't know.
But maybe didn't I understand the Italian language and therfore I came to this erroneus conclusion.

The forum is one year old and the community quite small (about 220 members). Soaps and aftershaves are important topics in the forum and many persons, as kingreverent supposes, have more experience with soaps that with straight razors. Every three months we publish a poll to make the point of our experiences, and from the last poll it results that 63% of members uses a straight razor, 17% safety razor, 13% shavette, 8% other blades (5-blades monsters? probably!). Cella and Valobra soaps are not so difficult to find (in one or two shops per city). SRP is an important source for our honing experiences, and Mastro Livi too is a reference for many of us who visited or phoned him to ask suggestions. King 1k/3k/6k/8k, BBW, Coticule, Norton 4/8, Hard Arkansas, Chinese and Shapton 16k (in this order) are the most used hones.

Sorry for the double post: just got the answer from the owner of the stone. The rating of the grit is based on practical experience "only". Using it with a SR, the stone is a bit faster than a sintetic 1000 waterstone and gives similar results.

and I take it that the synthetic is rated in JIS ...
ok, that makes it a bit coarser than I expected.

I found a website for someone in Illinois who has found a local stone that he uses for sharpening his straight razor. Illinois is basically between the Mississippi and the Ohio. I will invite him to join here.

And I accepted the invitation. I am no expert on the matter, but I do use stones and hones often as a professional sharpener. I have made a few also as an obsessive tinkerer. I think Pyment came across this blog from a woodworking discussion forum where I go into a little detail on making one. To be honest it was a failed attempt at a courser sharpening stone. It turned out finer and harder than planned so I decided it's best use was a razor hone. Blog on making a hone In the blog I state I just basically lucked into the raw material, a piece of sedimentary stone I found near the river that exposed it.

The results are evident in this video I made just playing around. "Razor sharp"