Thread: Salmen Yellow Lake vintage

I will save you effort. There is nothing concrete about CG on this or other forums. However if you get labeled hone many people will be pretty jealous including me.
When you get it post some decent pics even if you have no label. At least we can try to ID it.

Funny world,I know who owned that stone,was offered to me 3 days ago))

Originally Posted by eleblu05

Salmens Hone
As well as operating the Melynllyn Yellow Lake Hone Quarry, and being the UK's largest importer of Turkey Stones, this company also retailed a dark-blue slate hone under their own name. The label depicts the Salmen's logo of a fish and an S inside an inverted red triangle, underneath this there is a picture of Britannia and script stating "Made in England".
slate is easy to I.D when lapping it give off a distinctive smell. you wont be able to I.D german water hones with this slate hone they are different hones.

The stone arrived today, and you hit the nail on the head with the description for the slates stone, even the smell.
Being this is the slate version as you mentioned, does that mean this is not a yellow lake? Is there a particular name for the dark blue slate with their name?

I lapped one side and it is pretty fine, perhaps not as fine as the Escher, but not far behind. I will have to do some tests with the razor to get a better idea of it. So far I think it is a fine specimen for my collection.

slate is slate a fine grained rock a metamorphosis of clay , shale they all smell the same ime. thuringian/escher is quartz embedded in chalk

I have a question in regards to the comment about Eschers having quartz. Is that to say that only Eschers would have quartz? It was my understanding that Escher & Co sourced slate from different quarries in Germany. Being that every country has slate formations it's hard to believe Escher would be the only slate that would have quartz. Of course Escher picked the best of the best which is a given.

Not putting words in your mouth. I am just interested to learn.

eschers aren't slate. there is no quartz in slate. the quartz in eschers is a powder like quartz. these two stones are very different stones and are composed of different minerals

I think that is a marketing slogan "quartzite embedded in chalk"


Every thing I have read says that Escher = slate. Do you have a citation for this? Any info would be great.

My sources are srp wiki and timbertool website sidmind do you have both of these stones you should be able to tell the difference in-between them I have six slate stones and none of them come close to an Escher IMO

Yes I have many slate stones including blue and y/g Escher and several Thury's, I have other slate stones that are finer and leave a better edge others that are worse.....

Your right Eschers are great stones but only because they were hand picked, it has been proven that they sourced from several locations in Germany. Not just one hole in the ground, I am convinced that with the advances in mining operations that if it were profitable today many other hones could be sourced that would far exceed Escher. And in some ways it is happening... A well known UK fellow Is reclaiming used slate from ??? (could be old roof tiles for all we know). He has told me personally that he buys large quantities of slate, soaks them in water to check for iron oxide, rejects those that do.. then slabs them out and rejects the bad stuff. Basically he is doing the same as Escher did.. You can look at his estimates, the same stones are all over the place with grit estimates. (in his opinion). It's still just slate....... He is Escher Jr. LoL only because no one else is doing it...

FYI, timber tools can't change geology. It's still just slate I say. But I am no geologist,
Here is a great article on the subject, http://bosq.home.xs4all.nl/info%2020...ing_part_2.pdf

No matter the methods Escher and sons used for choosing their stones, Thuringians are amongst the best stones, and no matter the methods you use for choosing the finest, you can't change the characteristics of the stones you have.
You can't have slate without quartz, or minerals that contain silicon oxide. That's what slate and shale is.
I won a stone that looked like this one a few months ago with the Salmen sticker. The description said it was a yellow lake and it came with a box, but the stone was thicker than the classic yellow lakes, and 8x2. To tell you the truth I haven't honed a single razor with this one. But it feels fine.

Edit; if someone claims that his stone is chalk and you think it's slate or anything else, with a drop of strong acid you can find out. Chalk will give bubbles of CO2, the rest will not. A general rule, and don't you dare try it on a Thuringian!