Thread: Can you confirm if this is a ToS

Hi, I have just found this forum thanks to Piet. I am a green woodworker and have been collecting various sharpening stones for a few years now. I seem to be getting hooked on finding, identifying and using natural stones. I am also slowly learning to shave with a straight razor.

Is this stone a ToS? It was sold to me as a Charnley Forest. The surface has been flattened and what you see is in the stone, no dirt etc on the surface

sorry to say it is not CF.

Its not a CF. I believe it is a Llyn Idwal. Here's a shot of the end of mine.

They are very good finishers in my experience with 1, and from what I have read in the limited literature available. They come from the cliffs around a very small lake in Wales.

Welcome to SRP, Sean.

Neil seems to be pretty sure these are ToS hones in this post. I believe it's similar to this labeled ToS, although it's not an exact match. Would help if someone was to step forward with a picture of an identical labeled one

In this thread a mysterious hone is identified as being a Llyn Idwal. I have one just like it. I can take a picture of one of each together to show the difference.

The Llyn Idwal does have a barely noticeable ripple pattern and has speckles.

Thanks for your replies. So we think it is a Llyn Idwal, but it could possibly also be a ToS. I suppose this is the way it goes and there are some stones out there that never get identified. It is exactly the same as the picture you posted Scipio and similar to the bottom and right hand side one Piet posted.
I will wait in the hope that a similar boxed and identified stone appears.

i would say from the swirl pattern its a Llyn Idwal, Oilstone. Reputedly very similiar to Charnley Forest Hones, albeit harder, but was in less general use on account of it's being more expensive. Records go back at least as far as 1798

Welcome to SRP. All the tams I've seen have many more dots/speckles. Here are a couple of photos of a tam I sold some time ago.

In my experience, Tams do not have a surface shine to them, while once the Idwal has been lapped and used a few times it develops one, just like a Charnley does.

Another not so much 'test' but feature of tams is their square or short rectangular end profile/cross section. The Idwal may be comparatively more rectangular and perhaps even irregularly shaped i.e. curved at the bottom.

Finally, the ability to make slurry. Tams make one fairly quickly, which a Llyn Idwal can take a while and still only raises quite a thin slurry.

Tams also have a noticeable smell to their slurry which to me smells like sea shells, while the 'aroma' of the Idwal in my opinion is weaker. Of course this is entirely subjective for some tobacco smokers I know of can not detect such scents.

Originally Posted by Scipio

Its not a CF. I believe it is a Llyn Idwal. Here's a shot of the end of mine.

They are very good finishers in my experience with 1, and from what I have read in the limited literature available. They come from the cliffs around a very small lake in Wales.

I agree with Scipio. It looks like Llyn Idwall. However the quarry is about 0.5 mile away from the lake.
Quality of the hone is simmilar to CF.

I almost forgot, I know how much we all love a bit of 'porn,' so here's my Tam.