Thread: Llyn Melynllyn Welsh Stone

Originally Posted by Vasilis

That's unfortunate... (Not that I would like to see a National park destroyed for this reason). Regarding their price, for many many good stones, on antique stores and eBay, the sellers just sell "beautifully crafted" wooden boxes, that smells awfully, and you can't really store anything there, accept, there is also a stone in there that may worth a small fortune. all the antique yellow lake stones, including the salmens ones are sold for 20-30$ or so without shipping. I think those hones are very useful, very fine, and faster than most of the natural hones with similar grit that are sold for much higher prices.

Is this the same stone as a Salmen Yellow lake? i just got one of the Salmen and its almost black!

Yes, the yellow lake stones from salmens is from the same quarry as the purple yellow lake. I'm not sure if salmens mined stone from more than one quarries in that area, and named them all yellow lake like the next company that took the quarry, but most of the yellow lake stones are from the same mine. They say it's a little finer, but I haven't test a salmens one. What about the surry, what color is it? When we say purple, it's not the BBW purple. Much darker.

Originally Posted by Vasilis

Yes, the yellow lake stones from salmens is from the same quarry as the purple yellow lake. I'm not sure if salmens mined stone from more than one quarries in that area, and named them all yellow lake like the next company that took the quarry, but most of the yellow lake stones are from the same mine. They say it's a little finer, but I haven't test a salmens one. What about the surry, what color is it? When we say purple, it's not the BBW purple. Much darker.

I dont know yet about the slurry i didnt get the stone yet its on the way to me i cant wait!!

I'm not at all sure that the non-purple stones came from the same quarry. I have had two of them and they seemed finer to me than the purple ones, with a very different feel to them. I remember Ardsprach posting about the Dragons Tongue hone - they guy at the quarry (Inigo Jones quarry) said they used to cut stone for A. B. Salmen. I suspect that the change of stone had something to do with Salmen losing control of the quarry or just using the 'Yellow Lake' as an umbrella brand - the original blue box simply says 'Original Yellow Lake Brand' so you take that to mean a variety of things.

That they used stones from other quarries is known - see the advertisements below - and they also imported: I had a combination coticule/bbw with their logo on the side of it once (salmon + hook). Unfortunately they aren't about anymore - the company was taken over in 1926 by one calling itself 'Successors to A. B. Salmen) but they stopped filing returns in 1989.



This one shows an Aldgate address, the succesors had a Highgate address. The next one (earlier - 1890s) shows a Houndsditch address:



It is interesting to note the reference in the earlier advert - it says that A. B. Salmen was successor to S. Samuel - looks like a long line of 'successor to' in that line of work!

Regards,
Neil

Neil if you have one of the purple YLs with original label or box can you show them here please?

Here a pic of the stone i purchase same box and all

I believe that one is not puple size is 8x2x0.5" normaly quite fine.

Originally Posted by adrspach

I believe that one is not puple size is 8x2x0.5" normaly quite fine.

Yes sounds right Looking forward to try it out!!!

Originally Posted by adrspach

Neil if you have one of the purple YLs with original label or box can you show them here please?

I no longer have the hone, but here are some pics of it:



From what I remember it was not in the same league as the dark ones - more around 8 or 9k, possibly more with some finesse and/or oil.

Regards,
Neil

This might be of interest too - the list of holdings attributed to A B Salmen (Albert Berl Salmen, son of Samuel Salmen who was a founder of the Stepney Jewish School in London):-



I expect that you are already familiar with the quarries, but the dates might be of some interest.

Albert died in 1907. In 1910 a crown advertisement appeared to sell off the firms holdings, lock stock and barrel.

Regards,
Neil