Any ideas about this Hone or its origins?

The pictures are pretty clear as to what this stone looks like. It is a 9.25 x 2.24 x .75 heavy dense and fine grit stone. It was easy to lap, and raises a slurry easily so it is also soft. I would say 4-6K with slurry and you can set a bevel with it but it is slow. With just water it seems to be somewhere in the 8-10K as a finisher...feels like glass. I put a very passable 'shave ready edge' on a razor from start to finish with this stone, but the edge was definitely improved the second go around with my Barbers Gem Escher.

It is Greenish-Grey ( more Green than Grey) with really nice slanted horizontal stripes running the length of the stone. The striping becomes more pronounced when wet. When I first got this stone I thought it might be a Dalmore blue but it is green rather than Blue, and it seems to be much finer than what I have read about the Dalmore stones.

Anyway...check out the pics and I will defer to the many experts here a bouts as to what they think it may or may not be...Thanks!


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DBs are sandstones and their wavepatterns, if they have one, are more erratic. Especially since you describe it as glassy I would think it's a LI. Here's mine, you can have a look and see if it matches.

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Thanks Piet... I have a Lynn Idwall and it is 'much much harder' than this stone, and almost impossible to slurry. This stone is much softer than any LI I have seen...although the color is more like the 'Green' of a LI. The two 'Black Colored Spots' on one side of the stone seem to be harder than the rest of the stone if that means anything?

Hmm this one and 2 others I had were all just as hard as the other darkgreen LIs. So perhaps it is something else or a LI that just happens to be softer.

I does resemble some Tams and LIs that both myself and Piet have debated over in the past, however if soft as you confirm, seemingly it is neither. It may be a softer exception, but considering the latter are hard stones in comparison to some mainland European stones, it is unlikely even if soft it would be this much softer as I am inferring it is.

There are coticules this colour, but the 'snaked' pattern I have only seen on UK hones so I think this can be ruled out.

Anyone know what a Dalmore Yellow looks like, and its relative hardness?

Edit - if you can indeed set a bevel with slurry, again, not a LI. My guess would be some sort of Tam. Both Tams and LIs are hard hones, but my experience is that Tams are a fair bit softer than LIs.

Here a TOS with similiar patern but i dont think the color is the same but the OP pics are with water i believed.
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Originally Posted by Martin103

Here a TOS with similiar patern but i dont think the color is the same but the OP pics are with water i believed.
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Martin...what is the color of that Tam...Grey? I have a Tam and it is definitely grey with a speckled pattern. This stone is Green...here is a pic of it with no water:



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Originally Posted by Scipio

......if you can indeed set a bevel with slurry, again, not a LI. My guess would be some sort of Tam. Both Tams and LIs are hard hones, but my experience is that Tams are a fair bit softer than LIs.

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Thanks for the input Scipio...I have a very nice Tam and I can tell you that it is much harder than this stone...I don't think it's a Tam. At least not like any I've seen????

Yes definately grey for sure, i was thinking the patern was somewhat similar and not common for a TOS.Perhaps
its the famous cutlers green!

The consensus is that the Cutler's Green was a fine finishing hone. I doubt this is it. I'm beaten as to what it may be given that it is a soft hone.

Couldn't be a Dalmore Blue ?

Looks and sounds like a Dalmore Blue to me. They all have different patterning, but the lines are quite unmistakable when they appear to 'cut across' each other. Here are a few examples - wetted, so the colour is much more extreme than when dry:

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They do not appear to be blue either - at least not to me. I suspect 'blue' is a fanciful term for grey - they look mostly grey when dry, but the green tint predominates when wet or very finely lapped.

The Dalmore Yellow is a much different beast. It is a dra yellow colour and under a lens looks to be an agglomeration of coarse sandy particles - it does tend to release particles during honing to some degree, nicely scratching whatever you are attempting to hone! It's slow and very, very coarse.

Regards,
Neil

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Originally Posted by Neil Miller

Looks and sounds like a Dalmore Blue to me. They all have different patterning, but the lines are quite unmistakable when they appear to 'cut across' each other. Here are a few examples - wetted, so the colour is much more extreme than when dry.............They do not appear to be blue either - at least not to me. I suspect 'blue' is a fanciful term for grey - they look mostly grey when dry, but the green tint predominates when wet or very finely lapped......

Regards,
Neil

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Thanks for the input Neil! I am beginning to be convinced that this stone is in fact a a variation of the 'Dalmore Blue'...when dry it is greyish, especially under ambient light but if you take it outside , or wet it, the olive greenish hue is definitely more pronounced as are the striped patterns.

Could you tell me in your experience what the predominate approximate 'grit range' is for the Dalmore stones...

As I said in my initial post, this seems to be a very fine and dense grit stone (stone weighs in at 700+ grams) that slurry's easily. The slurry is 'milky white', and with slurry it seems to act like my 3-5K Naniwas as far as cutting power. Very smooth cutting but also slow. I can set a bevel with it...but wouldn't do that again because of the time involved...and with just water it acts a lot like my 8K Naniwa...or maybe slightly finer. The shaving edge was very nice (tested it on a vintage Fredricks Sheffield razor) comparable to a hard coticule (like my La Dresante Bleu), and it was definitely improved for the re-shave on a vintage Escher.

If I was going to use it as a progression stone (using Naturals), my guess is that one scenario would be to set the bevel first, then go to the TOS, then this stone(or visa versa), and finish with my Lynn Idwal. Just thinking outloud...

Here are a few pics for comparison, side be side with a TOS and a LI:

Anyway...any additional input would be appreciated.


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Hi Wolfpack!

The thing that tends to convince me that yours is some sort of DB is that patterning in the middle of the hone near the two dark inclusions. I haven't seen inclusions like that before, but where the stripe pattern seems to cut through another stripe pattern at an angle is very characteristic - not in the two examples I have shown, but it is a striking and common feature.

I have three examples in front of me at the moment - one is green/grey when dry, getting greener with a hint of yellow in the stripes when wet, the other two are light grey with a tinge of olive green when dry, getting greener when wet. All three are dense, heavy stones. Originally they were sold as 'smooth, fast cutting hones for preliminary edges on knives and penknives prior to final honing'. Which is about right in my opinion. I have had some that were probably as coarse as a 5k hone, and some as fine as an 8k hone, so I usually describe them as being in the 6k - 7k range. Yours looks unlike any other I have seen in terms of colour and with the dark spots, so it is probably a wildcard and could well be finer than the run-of-the-mill ones.

Regards,
Neil

Here's a pic of some of my DBs. They're porous, the water you put on the stone gets sucked in. It really shows the difference between wet and dry. I don't think they match with yours.

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Neil: Thanks for the additional input...I would also call this stone an 'intermediate finisher', much along the lines of my TOS. I think I will break out a couple of more razors to be honed and do a comparison between this stone and my TOS just to see what that tells me, and I'll finish them on the LI. I'll report what I find out...

Thanks also to you Piet for your thoughts as well. As far as porosity being a factor in DB's Piet, I can tell you that this hone is lapped very smooth ( to 400 grit paper ) and it is not porous at all. About the same as my TOS as far as that goes. It does absorb water, but not very quickly. The water seems to evaporate/absorb slowly rather than 'soak in'.