Thread: Help id this natural hone!

Well Disburden ive done that twice read the thread??

Originally Posted by Disburden

To all of those out there that want to know what their new natural stone is and how good it is...test it.
I know it's the hard work but that's how to figure it out..

You hone up til 8K level and you see if your stone makes the edge better or worse. If worse, how worse? Ok lets go back and see in between the 2-5 K grits, etc. Thats how you tell how to use a stone.

But it's work and work to every body is...well, hard.

It is unlikely that a razor finished on a PHIG would be ameliorated by a Llyn Mellwyn, however possible if you had a PHIG of coarser variety.

Originally Posted by Scipio

It is unlikely that a razor finished on a PHIG would be ameliorated by a Llyn Mellwyn, however possible if you had a PHIG of coarser variety.

That was my next question, thanks Scipio,still not sure yet, but im possitive that this hone ameliorated the phig scratch pattern.And i get a really good edge from the PHIG.And also ameliorated a professionally hone razor from a very reputable person, do most pro honer use eschers?

Originally Posted by Martin103

That was my next question, thanks Scipio,still not sure yet, but im possitive that this hone ameliorated the phig scratch pattern.And i get a really good edge from the PHIG.And also ameliorated a professionally hone razor from a very reputable person, do most pro honer use eschers?

Some pro honers I have encountered in the UK at least, finish on Naniwa 12K and Shapton 16K. I can't say for the US. I doubt from your experiences that your hone is a LM, but more likely to be a brown Thuringian or Vosgiennes, however I am somewhat puzzled given its large size. The latter are usually far smaller, less than half the size of your specimen. Maybe you hit the jackpot.

Originally Posted by Scipio

Some pro honers I have encountered in the UK at least, finish on Naniwa 12K and Shapton 16K. I can't say for the US. I doubt from your experiences that your hone is a LM, but more likely to be a brown Thuringian or Vosgiennes, however I am somewhat puzzled given its large size. The latter are usually far smaller, less than half the size of your specimen. Maybe you hit the jackpot.

Well that would be nice!! i guess the only way to tell if it is would be for somebody to send me a razor hone on an escher
and do a few laps on my hone and see if i can improved the scratch patern from the escher, Any Takers?

I do have doubts about purple Yellow Lakes. Purple slate is quarried for roof tiles not far from one of known location for YL quarries. However I went there and there was no sight of purple slate around. In those two normal quarries it is not unusual to see those green dots of different sizes and shapes in purple slate. Perhaps it could be the last one I have not been in yet? Hopefully next summer. And also hopefully between lapping I will have time to test purple slate as hone. So far I would say is coarser than YL.

adrspach, do you mean the Aberllefenni Slate and Slab Mine, Aberllefenni, Gwynedd? A Dutch collector bought a dark red DT from Inigo Jones which is harder than the other colors.

Btw I don't know if eleblu05's little stone is really a Yellow Lake, but the texture appears to be similar to that of regular DTs and a picture I have of the dark red DT.

Oldengaerde has several Vosgiennes so he may be able to give a more reliable answer on whether a purple stone is a Vosgienne or not. I know I won't be completely convinced about mine untill I've showed it to him in person or have bought a labeled one

i cant be certain either about the small purple stone i have. i thought it was a yellow lake stone but looking over some pics i have of yellow lake stones. all the purple ones are of a darker purple. the color of my stone looks to be more inline with the vosgiennes but i never handle another vosgiennes stone before also the yellow lake stone comes in around 8k the vosgiennes is around the fineness of a YG escher i think modine posted a thread about his vosgiennes and it had green dots. as for my stone i still leaning towards a yellow lake stone

I would say that the hone is almost certainly a purple slate. These have two types of greenish marks, one is patchy and irregular and the other, depending on the angle of cleavage, is either a well-defined round or squashed oval shape. The source of the stains/dots/spots is due to a ferrous reduction process formed around an original nucleous of iron within the matrix of the slate. Presumably the elliptical dots were once spheres, but the enormous pressure that formed the mudstone into slate has squashed the sphere flat, leaving it as in the following diagram:



I have one which shows this elliptical structure perfectly - it has just the one dot in the side of the hone though. Some references state that the dots follow lines diagonally through the hone, like veins.

This name-plate shows the same type of inclusions:



As does this gravestone:



No - they aren't spots of lichen! They are a bit burnt-out and look white, however.

I don't think that this is confined to welsh purple slate, either. Although I have not seen any I have read of a purple slate from Vermont that has the same type of greenish inclusions, and I suppose that anywhere in the world that slate is found could reproduce the same inclusions under the right conditions.

So, yet again it seems that it is not possible to assign the mine-name and thus the familiar name of the hone to this rock - all we can hazard a guess at is what type of rock it is.

Regards,
Neil

If you check my posts about DT you will find that more than a year ago I have spoken to the technician/cutter in I.J. who is great guy and library of knowledge. He told me that there is no single quarry for the DT hone. He picks stone as his experience and knowledge tells him. That is reason why there are such differences in DT performances. That is reason why I have advised some colleagues here who asked me to order DT as black as possible. Those are in my experience finest DT's I came so far across. Hopefully he will not kill me for it when I will go there next time. Also those in original packaging which you do not get with made to order DTs were so far pretty consistent. Also he showed me their books in which was written that in past they were cutting hones for Salmens.
If you say that there was purple very hard DT. I would say after what I have been told there and even saw that the piece is from the quarry above Bedgellert. It is purple and hardest in N. Wales.