Another I.D. please...

Any clues as to what this little fella may be? It's 150mm x 30mm x 18mm, fairly soft and very fine. Produces slurry with ease. Definitely a nice finisher.
Not much in the way of markings or figuring, just a few dark spots and a very faint pale diagonal line (which you can just make out the start of between the left and centre dark spots). Feels exceptionally smooth to the touch and has developed a nice sheen after honing a few razors on him.


http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/3934/hone.jpg

Here's the original ebay page: NATUARAL STONE FOR SHARPENING on eBay (end time 11-Oct-09 19:21:44 BST)

:)

Ah, so you were the one ;)


What colour and smell does the slurry have? Dark grey, more to the brown side than blueish? Dries to very light grey, almost white? Not a very strong scent but rancid with burned tones?

If you can take some more pics on a light background, etc that might give some additional perspective.


The "sheen" its developing may be "glazing" or loading which normally reduces the effectiveness of the hone to cut. Some natural stones will do this quickly if honed dry and then to a lesser extent when honed wet. For such a stone, that means you may have to refresh lap it more often than other types of stones in that category. I've had a few mystery stones I believe to be novaculite in origin that glaze quickly. A Dragons Tongue hone will glaze very quickly when dry to the point where the surface will have a uniform metallic sheen from steel; at that point, its effectiveness IME is reduced to essentially nil. I hear it now "....then, don't hone dry." or "Why would you hone dry then if you're experiencing those things, Chris L?????" I'm not honing dry, I often test a new stone by running a plane iron or chisel over the dry stone surface to see how the stone behaves in that one way.

Chris L

Ok, here's some on a lighter background:

http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/8964/imgp1228.jpg

Slurry made with DMT ex fine:
http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/9896/imgp1224z.jpg

Slurry beginning to dry:
http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/6299/imgp1225r.jpg

I have a rather poor sense of smell, but compared to my other stones, this has practically no scent. The slurry is a light, sort of milky grey which dries near to white. The sheen is still there after rubbing with the DMT and washing the stone, it's more like the stone is able to take a very slight polish rather than glazing from steel particles.

Looks like a thuringen of some sort to me.

Regards,
Neil

The surface of the stone looks very different from the muller thuringen I (think) bought from you (one of the "reep away oil" ones), but the slurry is very similar indeed although lighter. I'm rather hoping it's an old German hone. It's what I imagine one would look and feel like, it's rather difficult to tell from looking at photos though.