Thread: I need your hone master help identifying these stones

This swaty feels courser than my 3 line swaty pictured beside it, it's strange in that both sides are different.






This stone feels quite course on the green side and smoother on the top

This stone is kind of purple and only smooth on the top. The back is raw.

This stone feels smoother on the purple side than the white top but the purple side has no razor marks on the bottom leading me to think it's not to be used. The stone appears to be glued?

This seems to be the most used stone of them all, again, just the top was used and boy, I'm sure the barber could really sharpen an edge because there's to bowls carved into the top.






Any help is highly appreciated

I can't help you much, but the 2 hones in the last 2 posts definitely look like coticules. One looks like a glued combo, and the other a natural combo. By combo I mean the purple/blue backing is BBW (Belgian Blue Whetstone).

Dave, thanks for the information, any guesses as to what the grit might or might not be.

Originally Posted by ChayesFSS

Dave, thanks for the information, any guesses as to what the grit might or might not be.

Assuming those 2 are coticules, an exact grit cannot be put on them. But generally they are said to perform around the 8000 range. It really depends if you use them with slurry or with water. The backside (dark blue side) is probably BBW as I mentioned, and that is somewhere in the 4000 range. Those are complete ballparks since they are natural stones, i.e. they vary, but those 2 coticules look VERY nice. If I were you I would lap those coticules and try them out! My advice is to search for any thread/post of Bart's. Here's our resident coticule expert.

As for the other stones...I'm not much help there.....Sorry.

No idea what that first hone is but regardless of how smooth the chips in the edges are you want to chamfer them out.

Is that first hone really that orange? If so it's a new one on me and it sure looks natural and not artificial. I hope we can figure this out. Some of the other stones are belgian coticules and belgian blues. The one that looks glued probably is glued and there were some companies doing that about 80 - 100 years ago. I have some in my collection. Avoid soaking these as they can come unglued due to the water soluble glue they used. The purplish stone is probably a belgian blue and that's a 4000 grit stone that is a great hone and one I use all the time mostly on cutlery these days as I use Shaptons on my razors. The combo stone with the swirly border between the two layers is a natural combo and the belgian quarry is the only quarry in the world that produces such a stone. They're very handy and I keep one in the medicine cabinet to keep my razors sharp between honings. Use water on the coticules to make a slurry as the slurry is what cuts and polishes the steel. Nice collection there!

This might be a better picture of that stone? Not quite as yellow as that pic looks