Thread: Grecian Hones

Originally Posted by Piet

It's been too long since I used mine to give a reliable comment on performance, I may use it tomorrow and shave with the edge.

Scipio, the top one is the same type for sure. The bottom is a bit harder to make out but I assume it's the same just with a different color and less pronounced pattern. Kind of like the one I had in the classifieds recently.

So there are many variations of color and hardness for those Grecian stones. And the bottom one really looks like some Charnley forest. Are those similar in grit?

Most of the ones I've seen are lightgreen, the one in this picture is more blue and looks a bit different but the backs are identical.



The three I had were close in hardness, I don't remember one of them standing out.

I had used mine last with wood carving knives so I lapped it before use and finished it with a 3k waterstone. The surface was really smooth perhaps too smooth because the first 60 strokes with an already shaveready razor nothing happened. During the second set the stone was waking up, started making noise and I could see fine scratches appearing under the microscope.

I got bored and shaved. The shave was good but perhaps not a proper honing test

Piet, your top one is quite similar to my top one - even has a similar yellow/translucent fissure. I need to give mine a proper honing test as I haven't touched it for over a year. I remember it maintaining an already sharp razor and giving a good shave.

Doesn't say much I know - a good 8k under the right hand will do the same!

I received today the grecian hone I bought a couple of weeks ago from eBay (the first 4 photos of this thread). I had a little time to spare, so I tested it. It isn't a hard stone as I expected, and the slurry has a white color. It is very fast stone with water (no slurry), on 10 laps or so the water started to get darker, but the polishing it leaves is not very good, more like a matte finish, not mirror like. With oil, it gets slower and finer, but not nearly as fine as a Charnley of an idwal. It seems to be a different stone from those two. I think it's near the 10k level with oil, but I don't have much experience with oilstones so I might be wrong. I have honed one Sheffield razor with this stone, but I shaved last night so I have no experience on how it feels like on shaving, I will test it soon.

adrspach who has been in the Llyn Idwal quarry thinks he saw these Grecians as well as the harder darkgreen stones at the quarry. So both types seem to be LIs, although it might be useful to call these softer lightgreen stones Grecians to distinguish them from the harder darkgreen type.

Some more pictures of a LI in my thinking....


https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7092/...b0eb7c_c_d.jpg

https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2851/...6256f7_c_d.jpg

With water:
https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3681/...360a1c_c_d.jpg