Thread: Why are honing stones so expensive? Has our planet ran out of its resources?

Originally Posted by WW243

Did I miss the fascinating story in this thread of one of our members who took an idea found in this thread and developed it with hard work and creativity into a source of excellent quality natural stones? The Zulu my friends, it can be done and will be done again, the legends will take hundreds of years to mature.

I thought the same thing, but I saw the year of the threat and remember that the first Zulus weren't delivered until late August of 2012! However, first reviews came in June of that year. Double O

With regards to the original post, the simple answer is 'supply and demand' - some things don't ever change. You can't begin to factor in a price for a hone stone until you know how much it costs to mine (or make) per unit, how much advertising and promotion costs, how much packaging costs, etc, etc, etc - when all bases are covered you have a break-even price, to which you add further overheads and your profit margin. To cover initial costs you need to sell a lot at a low price, or sell a few at a high price. I can't see what the mystery is, to be honest.

Regards,
Neil

I don't know if it has already been mentioned or not but if hones are talked up in the forums .... I mean old naturals, J-nats and like that, the price goes up until the chatter tapers off and the 'next big thing' comes along. I remember when the Scotch hones, tams and dalmore blues were a hot topic and they were going like hot cakes.

I think the mystery for some is one similar to the mystery I feel about the Vintage Louper Flamme on the Bay right now...it is a mystery to me why I made so many truly thoughtless decisions in life which now put me in a position where I can't at this time, even think of bidding on that beautiful razor, sniff. If something cost more than you can afford, you can always dig deep and ask yourself how the hell did that happen? Or you can scream like a madman and say: not worth it! Impossible!

Originally Posted by Neil Miller

With regards to the original post, the simple answer is 'supply and demand' - some things don't ever change. You can't begin to factor in a price for a hone stone until you know how much it costs to mine (or make) per unit, how much advertising and promotion costs, how much packaging costs, etc, etc, etc - when all bases are covered you have a break-even price, to which you add further overheads and your profit margin. To cover initial costs you need to sell a lot at a low price, or sell a few at a high price. I can't see what the mystery is, to be honest.

Regards,
Neil

As someone wh has made a couple hones from natural rock found in less than a 10 mile radius the resources are everywhere. It's just way way cheaper for a company to order minerals than to cut a mountain of stone into little cubes. The synthetic whetstone industry killed the natural whetstone industry for that reason. Even in Michigan my home state there is a ghost town called grind stone city, which was once a booming town for jobs (making mammoth grind stones from natural rock) but it's demise layed blame to the invention of synthetic whetstones.