Thread: Salmen's Natural Oilstone, Yellow Lake Brand

This week I bought a Salmen's Natural Oilstone, Original Yellow Lake Brand. It didn't look like it had been used yet so I don't have to worry about oil in the stone and I will be using it with water.

It didn't take long to lap, so it's not a reallly hard stone but definately harder than a BBW. After lapping it to 800 grit sanding paper it feels about as smooth as a Rozsutec stone, which I put between 8k and the Chinese. I haven't honed on it yet which will be the final test.

Here are some pictures:

wow never heart of it. let us know how it works.

These are the stones that came from the Melynllyn Yellow Lake Hone Quarry near Conway in Wales. Salmens actually owned the quarry at one point, the earlier stones coming in a Salmens labelled box. Later on they were sold as "Genuine Yellow Lake Oilstone, This Label is Registered and Supplied Only by the Direct Quarrier and Producer." I'm not sure if this was because Salmens lost control of the mine, or whether the quarriers also sold the stone to the market themselves. The quarry is still there today, although it has long since fallen into disuse.

I have three of these. One with a Salmens label, and two without. The Salmens and one of the other two are both slate stones, the Salmens being a bit finer than the later one. I'd put the Salmens labelled one at 10k plus and the other one somewhere around about the 8k mark. However, the third one that I have is something very special, unlike the other two it is not a slate but a Calcelareous Siltstone, very (very, very, very), fast cutting stone but leaves an edge that feels a good deal finer than 16k.

Kindest regards,
Alex

Here's a picture of what's left of the quarry these days http://www.trekkingbritain.com/06052...ulynBehind.jpg

I've done a little honing on it and it seems to be slightly courser than my Rozsutec, maybe 0,5-1k, it's pretty close. I think it's a good stone to use between an 8k and 12+k stone. The size 20,3 x 4,5 cm is more convenient than my Rozsutec stone which is 15 x 5,2 cm so the Yellow Lake will replace the Rozsutec in my hone progression

After some more use and acquiring additional stones I think I can put this stone around the 8k grit mark. It's very similar to Dragon's Tongues. The following two pictures show how similar. The Yellow Lake is the bottom one in the pictures and slightly darker. The white specks in the dry picture are not part of the stone, I should have whiped it better

Thank you for pics nice stones

Originally Posted by Piet

After some more use and acquiring additional stones I think I can put this stone around the 8k grit mark. It's very similar to Dragon's Tongues. The following two pictures show how similar. The Yellow Lake is the bottom one in the pictures and slightly darker. The white specks in the dry picture are not part of the stone, I should have whiped it better

Perhaps it will be because the workshop which makes DT stones uses slate from different places. Recently went through my hands abot dozen of Yellow Lakes and about same number of DT. Think which I have confirmed (after I was tipped out by one of the colleagues here) that those darker colour ones are finer.
On the hardeness YL feels a bit softer than DT to lap.
About A_S finding from known location (?locations). There is strong possibility that there are two locations about 5-8 miles apart one of them probably under water after they raised the damm of their power station reservoir. There could be the other non slate YL from.

I have a yellow lake oilstone I won a long time ago on eBay UK. I still haven't gotten around to playing with it, though it is in a different box than the one pictured here.

So far I own 3 different boxes, have seen another 2 different boxes as well as I have 1 stone with direct salmens sticker on hone itself.
Additionaly long time ago Inigo Jones Works (Manufacturer of DT) used to cut hones for Salmens.