Thread: The Frankonian Hone

Originally Posted by Scipio

MODINE, that second stone you posted looks like a brown fox

The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy brown dog ...... sorry ..... couldn't resist .....

Originally Posted by Lynn

Mine ain't fur honin', it's just fur lookin' at..................

Have fun.

Hey Lynn...I finally figured it out. I will glue a silver dollar to it and tell everybody it is an honing award!
Stingray

After you mess with it and if you are ready to give up, Flip it over, lap in the back side, and start again

You can also try the same trick with the side you are working on, Lap heavy ie: in the 120 grit range, then do the work to bring it back up to smooth slowly... Perhaps just a slightly different layer will change the outcome...

Full Discloser: I have never even touched a Frankonian hone, this is just a system that works with many Naturals that want to be difficult

Originally Posted by stingray

I am using or trying to use it as a fine finisher but can't get it to really do anything. I might as well be using a piece of glass.

For me this usually means the razor isn't ready yet for the hone and I need to get back to the last hone or use another hone in between to bridge the gab. You could use slurry on the Frankonian but it may be better to find out where you at first. So unless your Frankonian doesn't have any cutting power it's a good thing it currently doesn't seem to do anything.

Modine, I don't think you can compare a Fox/Goldfisch Wetzstein to a Frankonian.

Originally Posted by gssixgun

After you mess with it and if you are ready to give up, Flip it over, lap in the back side, and start again

You can also try the same trick with the side you are working on, Lap heavy ie: in the 120 grit range, then do the work to bring it back up to smooth slowly... Perhaps just a slightly different layer will change the outcome...

Full Discloser: I have never even touched a Frankonian hone, this is just a system that works with many Naturals that want to be difficult

WOW!! Thanks for that.
I scuffed it up with my DMT lapping plate (the course one) and it behaves completely different. It will slurry and everything. Don't know if it will put a edge or not but at least it is doing something!!
Will keep you posted on my progress.
Stingray

Originally Posted by stingray

WOW!! Thanks for that.
I scuffed it up with my DMT lapping plate (the course one) and it behaves completely different. It will slurry and everything. Don't know if it will put a edge or not but at least it is doing something!!
Will keep you posted on my progress.
Stingray

You ought to send Glen that silver dollar you were going to glue onto it ......

@ Stingray,
just to clarify this a little bit:
there is not a Frakonian hone. Frankonia is an area in Germany, not a country. Most of the area of Frankonia is in Bavarian but even a part of south Thuringia is Frankonian.
As for the hones, there have been a lot of mines in the Frankonian area in the past.
Only about 5-10 miles from the thuringian main hone mining area Sonneberg-Steinach there is a famous Bavarian-Frakonian area around Lauenberg where hones have been mined in the past and were known as the “Lauenberger Wetzsteine”. The mines around Lauenberg have been closed with the end of WW2.
The stones that were mined here have been in the same geological age as for the Thuringians (Ordovician age) and are quite comparable to the hones mined in Thuringia. The best quality stones have been the yellow ones followed by green and blau/gray coloured hones – just like the Thuringians. But of coarse Frankonian is a large area with a lot of other mines in the south or elsewhere.

Browsing the forum I have noticed, that the general understanding for Frankonians is a brown/black hone (in the forum also sometimes called brown Thuringian) that has a yellow/brown slurry that distinguishes them from Thuringians (most green and blue Thuringians produce white/gray slurry)
I have some of those hones too, but cannot yet for sure state, where these hones have been mined.

Even now I am doing some research on these Frankonian hones and visit some of the mines that have been known and could still be located today.

But I can confirm that they are very good endfinshers, finer than blue or even green Thuringians of the Ordovician layers, like the Escher type Thuringians.

You should even use these stones without slurry if you want to use them as an end finsher. Slurry makes the stones much coarser than using the stone with only water - compared to what is known from other hones, where the difference is not that much.

Hatzicho

Nice hone collection. The two boxed examples are actually Schwedensteins from Saxony, Germany. While indeed German, they are slightly softer than Thuringians, and the slurry on mine and others owned by forum members I have conversed with, is brown/yellow as has been your experience.

From what I understand, the Frankonian is significantly harder than Thuringian stones. I have yet to try one and doubt I will at a purchase price of 120 Euros from their only known retailer since there is considerable inconsistency in their attributes and a lack of unanimity regarding their use, and consequently, their value as a finisher.

Samples seem to differ greatly even among experienced honers which (very much like all naturals, particularly coticules) causes difficulty in assessing whether a problem is due to the honer and/or the methods employed or the hone itself. At least with coticules, this is generally accepted as most on this forum have tried at least one coticule.

Originally Posted by Scipio

Hatzicho

Nice hone collection. The two boxed examples are actually Schwedensteins from Saxony, Germany. While indeed German, they are slightly softer than Thuringians, and the slurry on mine and others owned by forum members I have conversed with, is brown/yellow as has been your experience.

From what I understand, the Frankonian is significantly harder than Thuringian stones. I have yet to try one and doubt I will at a purchase price of 120 Euros from their only known retailer since there is considerable inconsistency in their attributes and a lack of unanimity regarding their use, and consequently, their value as a finisher.

Samples seem to differ greatly even among experienced honers which (very much like all naturals, particularly coticules) causes difficulty in assessing whether a problem is due to the honer and/or the methods employed or the hone itself. At least with coticules, this is generally accepted as most on this forum have tried at least one coticule.

Just a remark: Yes, mine is very hard. It is almost as hard as my surgical black. when you tap it with something it sounds like a Thury and not the glass ring like the translucent and the black.

@ scipio,

That’s interesting information. I have read about Schwedensteins in the forums but couldn’t find any single reference throughout Germany where the stones were from. Do you have any resilient reference, where the stones have been mined in saxonia or which company has traded them?
This kind of stones will be found quite often in germany. They are part of a box for straight razors with a storage for the razor, a strop and this stone.



These boxes are very typical for the slate industry in Steinach and also Lauenberg as storage for slate pencils. Slate pencil and blackboards have been the main industry as well as for the thuringian and for the discussed frankonian area, whetstones have only been a small side industry. So my conclusion on these stones was –with the lack of moere funded information- that they should have been either thuringian or frankonian origin. I would greatly appreciate any information on these Schwedensteins.

To the hardness of the discussed frankonians: they are indeed much harder than the thuringian stones. They remove only very small amount of material and are therefore somehow comparable to a novaculite charnley forest for example (regarding the honing, not the hardness). But according to my experience, they are giving a much smoother edge than the novaculite stones, even smoother than from a y/g thuringian, depending of course on the steel of the blade that you hone.