Thread: Cutlers Green? Or whatever you guys SAY it is!

I can take more pictures. Its hard though, as my only camera is my cell phone. Color is always a problem with this thing too!

more important is if there are any chips, cracks, brown or other discolorations.

This type stone comes up quite often on auctions, I don't think it's a grecian hone, nor charnley forest. I can't say for sure that it isn't Llyn idwal or a variety of TOS, but it is a very fine stone from what I have heard. It might even be some other unknown stone from UK, since there are about 20 different kinds of identified stones from there, there might be more. As far as I know, nobody really knows what a cuttlers green stone looks like, accept that it's forest green, and it has some shiny speckles in there.

I don't think that Magpie's or Olivia's are CGs. If they are, then I have bought and sold numerous examples of them.

I have not come across one single reference that says that jewellers used Cutlers green hones - I guess the clue is in the name - 'cutlers'. On the other hand, most jewellery supply stores sold sticks of TOS and WOA for jewellers use - intaglio print makers also used them. They were used to polish metals in clock escapements and that sort of thing - until comparatively recently one jewellers suppliers in the UK still had a stock of TOA sticks, usually 5/8ths in section although the width could vary. They stopped selling them approx 5 years ago. The metals they were used on were not particularly hard, and one reference for CG hones states that they were used for lancets, etc - hard steel implements.

It reminds me of the origin of the Devonshire oilstone and the Devonshire bluestone - mention of which was made by a stone collector in a journal when he was talking about his own collection, and which has remained speculative ever since. Most of the references to CG stones boil down to two or three particular works, the most notable being Turning & Mechanical Manipulation by Holzapffel. One other source mentions sparse blueish dots. I don't know about anyone else, but to my mind the dots on the two offered examples are anything but sparse or scattered.

Shiny speckles - why not? It seems that CGs were probably mined from specific areas along one continuous vein of igneous hornblende/slate - a greenstone dyke abutting a slate layer which was metamorphosed by the igneous hornblende. Examples from similar sites along the same vein or dyke in Snowdon are more or less crystallised in nature, the less crystallised ones showing shiny specks of feldspar and other minerals. LIs, which come from this region, are very crystalline in nature and often have percussive or bulb/shell-shaped fractures on the surface, along with the slight scattering of dots. Their cousins, the CFs, are similar in nature coming from similar beginnings, but are characterised by ferric deposits that give rise to the familiar markings.

Some works say that LIs are harder than CFs and would have replaced them if it was not for the relatively high price of the LIs. Given this, the area they come from and the way the markings - if present - are not that obvious, it is not too much of a leap of faith to speculate that the CG was in fact some form of LI.

From the speckling in the two given examples I would lean more towards TOS than LI - sure, some LIs have a lot of speckling, but it tends to be fainter and harder to see than with most, if not all TOS hones.

A lot of stones that were used as honestones were never produced in enough quantity in the British Isles to make them either enduring or well known, and as Vasilis says there may well be many more out there that we do not know about. One old work from the 1840s alludes to a yellowish hone, glassy in nature, from the environs of Snowdon. Another from not too far away was white. As far as I am aware no one has seen these either, just like the CG. Maybe a documented example exists in the rock collection of a long defunct amateur mineralogist - but who knows? If that amateur was a razor-nut we surely would have read about it, but we haven't. If none of us can say with any certainty what one is or what one looks like it, it seems certain that they will remain the stuff of legend.

Regards,
Neil

So, does anybody want to see my microscope pics of the scratches between Thurry, green mystery rock, and 16k glass?

If I remember right the example which was seen here came from old clock maker who had two and gave one away.
As about other hones from Snowdonia (please note Snowdonia not Snowdon) there are few already known. Namely DT and YL. With Neils white hone from Snowdon yes it is possible. There are deposits of white mineral. However I am not sure about its honing abilities as to my eye they look like silica veins.
Unfortunately links and photos of the quarry are lost in my old PC. But as for CG from what I have seen so far the quarry is not on Snowdon but on mountain next to it Moel Siabod. It would be helpfull if somebody with proficiency in photografy and access to pictures from the qurry coul give me time of the day and directin they were taken. This would allow to narrow to fewer possible quarry holes.

It was I who put one such stone for sale a long time ago, still posses it and still get ok shaves from it. The clock maker was a friend of my dads (he also made jewelry and cut gems and stuff, he had one of the most impressive hone and polishing stone collections I have ever seen even by HAD people) He said he got them from a town in the UK where they were literally everywhere, since they used them to pave some houses gardens and stuff.

He used the cutlers green to polish really small tools used to screw and arrange really tiny clock work stuff. This guy was no amateur too BTW, he once told me that the work he did was harder to do than brain surgery since a lot of the complex mechanisms needed to be virtually friction free so really high polishing stones were treasured. I will see if I can find a pic of the stone, its about 6x2.5 and looks brick like. Nothing like the one posted here and it is minty green with whitish streaks, seems to be kinda like a mix between beryl and chalk or something, its pretty psychadelic if you ask me. Will try to get some good picks of it to post.

Than you. I was getting worried that HAD got better of me and I started to see things which were not there. Lookin forward to see the pics.

Please, take a picture of the stone, I really want to see it and I hope it really is cuttler's green. Talking about HAD, yesterday I won a Grecian hone, with a James Howarth & Sons label that it says Grecian stone. This will be my next thread I'll open, if anyone knows anything about this stone, accept that it's very good

Is it the one of UK auction? To me it looked too much like one of newer CFs. Will be interestin to see proper pictures.