Thread: Yet another mysterious hone...

I got a nice vintage hone a little while ago. I thought it was a thuringian while it was covered in grime and grunge, but lapping it soon revealed that it was not. It was very hard to lap - if anything, as hard as or a bit harder than a charnley forest hone. During lapping it gave off a milky white slurry, tinged with lime green.

Here are some pics of the hone - dry at first and then wet. For a colour reference, there is a grey 'celebrated thuringian water hone' at the top, the mystery hone in the middle, and a blue/grey vintage thuringian below it:











The pictures haven't really caught the colour - it is a drab green/grey, and it has a kind of ripple pattern, almost 3D, in the depth of the stone - couldn't quite catch that with the camera either. It is about 9 inches long an 1.25 inches wide. I have only done a few minor experiments with it, but it produces an amazing edge - highly polished and incredibly smooth. The feedback - for such a hard, glassy stone - is great: as you begin honing it feels buttery smooth, not glassy and hard at all, and as you proceed a massive suction becomes apparent. I have done about 100 laps after an 8k stone, stropped the razor and it passed the HHT like a champ - the hairs just fell away as they touched the blade.

The water seemed to thicken a bit after 50 laps or so - I'm not sure if it was a thin slurry or just metal, though. It seems a bit perverse that a hone that was so hard to lap should release a slurry. After honing the surface of the hone (lapped to 600 grit) had got quite glassy - to the point of reflecting things held near it like the light bulb filament above my honing station.

It does have certain qualities in common with the less colourful charnley forest hones I have used, but it is cut much thinner (0.5 inch) and more regular than any CF I have come across yet. Given the colour I was trying not to get my hopes up that it was a cutler's greenstone, but I have not been able to find a really good description of one, let alone pics, so I thought that someone here might be able to help - one way or the other!

Regards,
Neil

Hello Neil,

Cutler's Green hones tend to be a brighter, forest-green colour, with intermittent blue specks. Based on your pictures, and your description of the stones performance I would think it likely that your stone is either a Grecian Oilstone or an Idwall Hone. Both are a match for the colour and the Idwall stone is often described as being similar to a Charnley hone albeit harder, whereas the Grecian stone is described as being similar in appearance, but superior in performance, to the Idwall stone.

Kindest regards,
Alex

Nice stone Neil!

I'm interested to hear how you think the edge from that stone compares to a Charnley Forest in terms of smoothness?

Many thanks Alex - that rules out the CGS quite effectively - this hone is more like the green of our coastal waters when it is dull outside, with no hint of specks of blue.

Stuart - I have a CF on hand - and I need a shave, so I will try both stones and report back.

Regards,
Neil

Beautiful stone. I am learning much. Thank you for showing.

Alex, Just so you know, I print off and have created a reference book for all the information you have been providing..thank you

Congrats on the cool hone, alas as mentioned by the living hone encyclopedia (with all due respect) it isn't a cutlers green, the one I had looked as though it was a dab emerald pixelated with blue green specs and gives out a mint colored slurry, the edge off the stone was pretty nice to bad I had to sell it in order to feed my Jnat had... the things we do to feed the monsterous maybe I should start fighting it ->

Thanks Modine and Memorael!

Stu - well I finally got around to recording the results of the shave test. I used the same razor for both stones, taken back to an 8000 grit edge both times, stropped the same number of times on the same strop. No pastes or powders, just a plain leather strop as all I was interested in was the edge left by the stones.

Both seemed to perform equally well concerning stubble removal - the unknown hone shaved half my face just as closely as the CF, but the CF gave a much, much smoother shave. Going back over the half previously shaved using the unknown hone, but with the CF, didn't remove any more stubble that I was aware of. Given the choice, I would finish on the CF. Especially as ATG was easier.

I think I will do the experiment again, though. I used the same number of laps on each hone (only 50) but the CF is nearly twice as wide as the unknown, so perhaps I will do proprtionately more laps on the unknown hone to take this into account. I think I will also increase the number of laps overall, perhaps to 75 - 100.

Also, I think I will use a glycerin emulsion as a halfway-house between water and oil - in the past these types of hone have given me superior results with oil, but I dislike using oil as I find water much cleaner and easier to clean away. The glycerin emulsion is an idea of Alex's - thanks, Alex!

Regards,
Neil.

PS: Memorael - you know resistance is futile!