Grecian Hones

For a long time I've been wondering what to call these light green sometimes blueish stones with a swirling speckles pattern. Are they Llyn Idwals, a type of Tam O'Shanters or something else? I've only seen one with a Douglas Oilstone label before at the forum.

These pictures come from a recently ended auction. It features a stone of this type but with a Grecian Hone label:

'Genuine Grecian Hones', 'sold wholesale by James Howarth & Sons'

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I found one reference to Grecian hones at the forum by A_S:

Quote:

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...the Grecian stone is described as being similar in appearance, but superior in performance, to the Idwall stone.

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The stone in that thread is a different type of stone, harder but it also has a speckle pattern and flaking. I have two of these and one of the lighter ones. I also have a somewhat similar blueish stone.

Are all of these lightgreen stones Grecian Hones or is just a brandname from James Howarth & Sons. Do they come from the Llyn Idwal quarry?

Here's one of mine and one I had.

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Couldn't it be as simple as the name suggests? Grecian=Greek

There's a thread on the Greek stones over at that Belgian forum.

If I understand it correctly, the Greek stones were known and sold as Turkey Oilstones. It would surprise me if these Grecians were not quarried in the UK.

I know every stone Greece has to offer. I live here, this stone is not from Greece. Only two kinds of sharpening stones comes from Greece; The known Turkish oilstone and another one very coarse variety from northwest Greece, that has no name. I won this auction for the Grecian stone, and I will post pictures and my impressions about it when it arrives. As far as I know it's from Wales, but I'm not sure if I read it somewhere. If we knew where was its mine, the identification would be a bit easier. Piet, what is your opinion of this stone? Is it fast? Fine like a Charnley? Hard like an Idwal? From its length, 7 3/4" I would guess it's a fast one.

An ode to a Grecian hone. They were part of the Elgin marbles. (sorry I couldn't help myself)!

Haha nice one :p but seriously, anyone who has experience with this stone, I'll be waiting to read about it. I know it's kind of a rare stone, but many fellow HADdicts must have a couple or a dozen of them.

Do I have one? I have two (and several others) very hard British hones which although fine finishers are of unknown identity to me.

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Are those Grecian hones? The first looks like a Llyn Idwal stone, for the second I'm not sure. The Idwal I have seems finer from stropping with diamond paste 1micron, but the polishing it gives is bad, with oil, not mirror like at all.

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.

Thanks Piet, I thought the top one was one. It looks like a Tam sometimes, but it is slightly translucent. I initially thought the bottom one was a green Charnley - when next to a normal one, the green is identical. I'm just not sure what it is.

Quote:

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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.

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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.

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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