Thread: Any guesses as to what this is?

Originally Posted by adrspach

Just found note in my post box that a stone I am expecting from ebay is in my post office that is the good part of HAD. The bad one is they are already closed for X-mass and open on Tuesday. Do you think it would be a criminal offence to pick my stone earlier even thought they are closed?

A true 'jury of your peers' would all be Haddicts and in that case no jury would convict you.

Ok now where is the balaclava and dynamite.

I was unfamiliar with the term balaclava, so prior to looking it up, I pictured someone breaking into a post office with dynamite and a turkish phyllo dough desert.

No, Hi_bud, the real sign of HAD is that I'm thinking about how much fun it would be to do this regularly.

Originally Posted by IanS

No, Hi_bud, the real sign of HAD is that I'm thinking about how much fun it would be to do this regularly.

IanS
We have early POST about HAD signs. if you find that post it will be a lot clear to you.
You are welcome to add to that post any sign you think is belong to HAD .GL

i SHOULD say you are in early sign of HAD don't expect it will get easier yet. There is steps and they are taking years to clime. The day will Come you will pay for useless rock 50.00 and sit back and say what the ... i am doing this.
have fun this is all good

I think I've seen that thread before, but I'm having no luck with search digging it up now... so I'm safe. If I don't know the symptoms of HAD, I can't get it, right?


Anywho... it arrived.

It's 8.25"x2"

It is somewhere around my swaty three line. Definitely finer than my bear 4k (JIS). I'd guess 10-14k Slurry from spots cleaned of oil is milky white. It's definitely not translucent (trick of the light?). It's a soft yellow, theres still a bit of oil residue, once that's gone I expect it will be off-white (hint of yellow). It makes slurry quite fast (not very hard, much harder than my bear but quite a bit softer than my swaty) and cuts at about the same rate as my bear, maybe a touch faster.

I really don't have any kind of guess as to just what it is, the pattern looks almost sandstoneish, but I don't know stones too well, for all I know it could be some kind of old ultrafine synthetic(joke: it's got an inclusion so I know it's some kind of natural). It's glued into the base, so cant check out the other side. Scrubbing some oil off may get me closer to ID. I managed to borrow a camera and snag a couple pics.

looks rectangular to me, LOL

Ian could you please place it between a couple of other hones and take a crisp picture with daylight?

It looks like an oxidized "La Grosse Blanche" Coticule.

I'm far from sure. I don't know a lot about any other natural hones than Coticules.

Please compare to this picture:
(a heavily oxidized "La Grosse Blanche")


The oxidation can be rubbed away with a slurry stone, after doing that, the hone should look like this one:


I'm mentioning this as a possibility.

Best regards,
Bart.

I'll get a picture with friends outside tomorrow. I'm fresh out of daylight today. The color is about right for that heavily oxidized coti you pictured, but it's behavior with slurry isn't how I understand a coti should be (slurry doesn't seem to make it as coarse as the various coticule sites suggest a slurried coticule should be). Also, it was pitch black with oil residue when it arrived... would a coticule ever see use with oil?

If there's anything else I can do to help you guys out on the ID, let me know and I'll give it a shot.

Ok, I took a razor I'd finished on my swaty down there. Made a nice batch of slurry with my DMT. It's pure white, milky and basically looks like chalk in water. In the right light just the faintest hint of lavender. Under 100x there's nothing but white goo. At 400x there are tiny white particles the size of a sharpened pencil tip. It dries fast, and again is JUST like if you dissolved chalk and let it dry... leaves that white chalky crust. (This is how the slurry off my Karasu behaves also... however, the Karasu slurry doesn't change color during use nearly as much as this stuff... it starts light gray and finishes slightly darker light gray).

So I worked my razor with a lot of slurry. The slurry turns deep lavender and gray as you work it. After several passes, I call my mother over and ask her what colors she see's on the stone (dominant colors). Purple, Lavender and tan was her verdict. I saw gray and green/yellow as well, but she didn't mention those. Slurry was definitely gray/lavender (I'd call it gray with hints of lavender, she called it lavender).


I look at the razor at 100x.

No scratch pattern. Just haze. I use a led flashlight to illuminate, and I tried every angle that thing could get. Haze from every angle.

I'd say it's not quite as fine a finish as my Nakayama Karasu but it's damned close. With heavy slurry this stone is much finer than my swaty. Much, much finer. It acts a lot like the Karasu too. The slurry changes with use. The only real differences are that this stone is Way, way, WAY softer than my Karasu, and cuts much faster. I'd think it was a Japanese stone if the circumstances of my getting it didn't give absolutely no indication of that. It came in a box (I can't ID woods) that screams old timey american to me. It was drenched in oil residue. And it came from a fellow named Howard in MO.

Still sounds like that Coticule to me.
The speed you report, reasonably fast discoloring of slurry while honing on it. Scratch pattern looking hazy (as it it was micro-sandblasted?). It all sounds very familiar. Softer stones are quite common among Coticules.

They sometimes were used with oil. Not sure about the Lavender scent.

Does the surface looks lighter now that you rubbed slurry off it?

Best regards,
Bart.