Thread: Green UK stone

As far as "confirmation" goes, nothing is confirmed unless it is supported with hard evidence - like paperwork from the time and the name of the quarry involved. Anything less than that is just supposition as far as I'm concerned.

The stone I showed pictures of was nowhere near as hard as an LI, which is why I leant towards ToS having had a lot of experience with LIs. It did not have a glassy quality that many LIs have, nor any inclination to the percussion-bulb type of fracture that you often associate with LIs. However, in a world where a minor jumbling of ingredients results in something other than the original it may well have been a 'type' of LI, a type of LI that did not give the same sort of edge refinement as you would associate with LIs but more in line with ToS and a degree of hardness that you would associate more with a ToS than an LI.

As far as variety goes in the ToS line, I have seen 10" plus long ones, almost white ones, grey ones, greenish ones and decidedly blue ones. The white ones can approach 10k or so, while the majority fall in around 7k to 9k. LIs would be almost on a par with CFs, certainly exceeding 10k and more like 12k - 15k. Those are conservative estimates, and only apply to 70 - 80 examples I have made tests on. I suppose a certain amount of information could be gleaned by specific gravity measurements, which I intend to pursue in the future. With a known SG one could at least work out the novaculite content.

Regards,
Neil

Beautiful stone

Originally Posted by episaacs

Beautiful stone

I agree - that is certainly a beautiful stone, Wai, whatever it is.

Regards,
Neil

I'm sorry, yes, there are no hard evidence about them, at least that I'm aware of. The specific gravity is definitely a good test for confirming their composition. . For the lime containing stones (thuringian?), a good way of identifying them is using a strong acid and check for bubbles of CO2, and depending on their composition there are ways of identifying them. Gemologists have most of the basic equipment for the more complex tests including specific gravity, and they don't charge much.

I contacted the seller and he said that he believes the stone is from Wales.

The wooden box base is marked 'W Mortimer' on 4 sides and I'm told this indicates that it is a good quality stone. It is presumably not the name of the previous owner.

The seller owned and used the stone many times for sharpening carpentry tools.

looks like a Llyn Idwal to me

Indeed a beautiful stone and not one I have before seen. It resembles a Turkey Oilstone although the colour is wrong, while but for the veins it looks akin to a stone in my possession which I believe is a Greican per a thread you may have seen posted in the last fortnight. Greicans allegedly are Llyn Idwals ("LI") and while I have suspicions that Cutler's Greens ("CG") may also be, I have no literature to support either concept.

While a 'Douglas Oilstone' owned by Shooter I believe, was likely to have been a LI and later shown to be but identical to a Greican; it may be that the same is true for the CG, ie. there may have been one single area or slab within the LI quarry with unique characteristics similarly to veins of coticule at Ardennes, that was named 'Cutler's Green.' Again I have no literature to support such a hypothesis, however given that there is not one conclusive sample, it is not unforeseeable that this was the case.

Back to the OP; I agree with Neil Miller that this does not match the description of a CG but I disagree that it looks like a Tam, notwithstanding similarities despite the difference in colour between the two. I would be interested to read about its performance. Invariably some will acknowledge that stones look different at hand to their appearance in photographs and this again will make a difference to what opinions you may have received if the stone were at hand compared to samples of known identity.

Thank you for all the kind and informative comments!

When dry and under normal indoor lighting, it is a darker, dare I say, forest green. It really is a beautiful stone and not a bad performer.

It certainly produces a smoother edge than my CF/LI and Llyn Melynllyn, looking at it under 40x magnification.

A test shave (without stropping) was just about tolerable.

Sorry, The stone looks like a Fiddich river stone! See: http://straightrazorpalace.com/hones...id-please.html