Has anyone ever had any luck with a Frankonian rock?
If so how, This thing is driving me nuts:cen
Stingray
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Has anyone ever had any luck with a Frankonian rock?
If so how, This thing is driving me nuts:cen
Stingray
What stage of the game are you using it at ? It is supposed to be a finisher so it ought to be towards the end with an already shave ready blade. Not saying it is good or bad .... dunno, just that if you are going at it too early in the progression you may be shoveling against the tide.
I have one, never was able to get edge that is better than ~8k on it.
Get a razor shaving well at 8k and then once you've got that try the frank with light slurry ten light pressure or weight of the blade round trips and test again. If that doesn't improve it does it make it worse ? May need more on the finisher .... may need to try a different razor .... or the hone may not be any better than what mainaman found with his .... if it is even as good as that. Natural stones aren't poured into a mould and baked like a ceramic or whatever. IOW, not all the same. Keep fooling with it and maybe you'll find the sweet spot.
I've got one and I'm very happy with mine. I start off doing 50 or so laps with a light slurry and then fiinishing with 50 or so laps on water. I get a good improvement on edges over my Shapton Ceramic Pro 12k. Ask Voidmonster what he thinks of the edge on a Dahlgren wedge he recently acquired off me. That was finished oon the Frankonian.
What does your Frankonian stone look like, please confirm? As mentioned not all natural stones are equal even coming from the same mine.. Here is a Franknonian stone which an Ultra-Fine finisher with oil. The razors edge needs to be prepped to the maximum level before proceeding to this type of stone. Only used on “GOOD” razors. I hope this helps some.
Mike
http://i.imgur.com/Haxtd.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/zWNrc.jpg
Mine ain't fur honin', it's just fur lookin' at..................
Have fun.
MODINE, that second stone you posted looks like a brown fox
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
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.
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
@ 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.
Attachment 101172
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.
@ 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.
Attachment 101284
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.
Hatzicho
Here and here are a couple of threads on Schwedensteins.
Mine is the same as yours in a boxed case/strop as are most examples. A member here, Piet, had a labelled one once which I believe he sold. Usually blotched or variegated, I have also seen an almost single colour one and striped samples and Olgengarde reckons that particular distinctive of this hone seems to be that it almost invariably comes in thin slices, never in chunky bench stone formats. That unfortunately renders them awkward to use for some, and more prone to splitting and breaking. Mounted on paddles, they sometimes bend and crack lengthwise with the deformation of the wetted and drying wood.
I did try to sell the labeled Schwedenstein paddle which was cracked, but instead I removed it from the paddle and backed it with slate. I now use it as a slurry stone. Here are the old pics.
Attachment 101321
Attachment 101322
Thanks Piet, those were the pics I was looking for but couldn't find. It's the only picture which shows a clearly labelled Schwedenstein.
Scipio,
you mentioned that the stones are from saxonia. Is there any further information or do you simply refer to the mountain Schwedenstein in the Lausitz region of germany?
A short look at the geology of this mountain shows, that the main rock here is greywacke, which we have already discussed in another thread. In the literature I have found that in some mines in this region greywacke is found with encased metalliferous veins. So maybe we are on the correct lane.
I will do some further research on this and come back with the results.
A member here told me they came from mount Schwdenstein in Saxony - I can't remember whom. It may have been Oldengarde.
I remember that too, Jimmy. However, I had some correspondence with Henk Bos some time ago in which I mentioned the Frankonian hone, and he said that he had visited the mine several times and the mine-owner (Manfred Teichmann - I think Olivia's brother is called Antje) gave him a couple of hones. The mine specialises in stone for interiors, gardens and monuments - not hones - so you have to ask for a hone. I did just that - and like when I did the same thing on Olivias site, response was there none!
Henk sent me a photo of the mine:
Attachment 101541
It's in the Hof region of Bavaria, I believe.
Regards,
Neil
Thanks Neil. Glad my memory is correct .... I'm getting old y'know ... :p It makes sense that the mine mainly quarries stone for industrial or decorative materials. The same with Ardennes IIRC. The hones being an adjunct of the main marketing. I guess , in this day and age, it wouldn't be a viable business if hones were all that the quarry mined. That darned safety razor came along and ruined the market. :shrug:
I think we have to differenciate here a little bit.
There are ancient hones that were called Frankonians (Franken) in germany. A member of a german forum for razors and hones reported, that butchers in former times uses the frankonians as an finisher to remove the ridge that has build up during sharpening of their knives.
Here is a link to the thread in german language, where he compares old frankonian to Olivias frankonian stone.
Der Fränkische Schiefer oder die Europäische Nagura Methode
Olivia then called her hones also frankonian, because of the area they were mined, I suppose.
Thanks for the link, Hatzicho - very interesting reading. I particularly like the bit where the poster mentions using a layer of tape on the spine of the razor when finishing on the Frankonian - this I suppose is indicated by other posters who have said that their Frankonians seemingly do nothing - keeping the very tip of the bevel alone on the hone would concentrate its effect, I think.
The article has several things that you could, perhaps, clarify. Fistly, what does GBB and BBB stand for? Secondly, what is the vendor site that 'must not be named'?!
I found an article which elaborates a little on the bed of slate that runs under the Thuringia/Frankonia region:
Attachment 101546
The slate mine in Lotharheil, Geroldsgrün that is mentioned must be none other than Manfred's mine, which I alluded to earlier.
Regards,
Neil
It is not the only quarry/mine doing that. Inigo Jones uses material they have for their outdoor plagues. decorations anf fire surroundings. Ayrshire works known for their hones used to crusH and grind the rock into powder which was then used as filler to paints. CF quarries quarried the rock as hard core for roads. Just last weekend I have seen a lump of rock in one museum on south coast where I could clearly recognised it was raw CF in gravel of other kind of rock.
I've seen post, a few years ago, of roads, houses, fences, tables .... all sorts of things made with BBW. Pretty cool to be able to have something like that for those of us are hone freaks.
Guess what is Whittle Hill Cottage made out of? Or stone wall bellow the Moughton Hole?
I thought Olivia was a guy?? She’s a He.
Neil, GBB = Gelber Belgischer Brocken (Coticule) and BBB = Blauer Belgischer Brocken (BBW).