Thread: Banded/Layered Hone ID

Picked this up whilst floating around Cornwall for a friends wedding. It was black & boxed when I got it & I thought it might be a Charnley Forest. After a lot of oven cleaner, dishwasher residence, 80 grit sanding belts and some finer lapping it's appearing brown/beige and banded. Not at all what I thought.

It's a hard stone, not as hard as my vintage translucent arkansas, which after 18 months still isn't flat, but not too far behind & a fair bit harder than my Chinese 12k/phig/chugs or Welsh Stones.

After lapping I put a shave ready Solingen to it, weird. Felt like honing on popping candy, the hone felt great but there was lots of pinging and dinging, felt like it was releasing tiny bits of grit. I then took a V2 Japanese knife to it which had the same feeling but it calmed down a lot after a minute or two. Back to the razor and I'm still not happy, it's still feeling just a little gritty - like a two or three tiny grains of sand are always floating around. Hoping I can sort out the 'floating grit' issue to get a better idea of the stone, it seems pretty fine but I'm not trying any shave tests until I'm happy with the feel of it.

The stone was heavily dished on the sides near the middle, the centre point was pretty much level with the ends. Looked like someone had been using it, evenly, on each side for a looooong time - the first pic shows a little of the dishing but that pic is after a lot of lapping.

Two of the pics are of it fairly clean mid-lapping, the other are of it after the V2 knife and with a little olive oil - I couldn't find my honing oil at the 'it's flat' moment and had to try it out.