Originally Posted by
JimmyHAD
When I was just dipping my foot into the Escher waters, I asked Lynn Abrams and Tim Zowada which of the colors they favored. Lynn said there were subtle differences between the blue/green and yellow/green and that he favored the blue/green. Tim Zowada also favored the blue/green at that time. Tony Miller used to sell Thuringans and occasional vintage Eschers. He discontinued selling the Thuris because his supplier, across the pond, couldn't maintain a supply of quality stones without inclusions.
Tony told me that Rabbis would come to him for stones for the kosher butchers and that they were solely interested in yellow/green stones. Nothing else would do. So that was the extent of my early investigating on these stones. Soon I acquired some of each color. I stuck with labeled Eschers, not because I thought them to be better than unlabeled Thuringans, rather because I wanted to know what I was getting. I didn't want to be in the position of those j-nat collectors who are paying big $ for stones without always knowing for sure that the stone is the real McCoy.
Cutting to the chase, I like yellow/green stones the best but blue/green is very good too. I cannot prove it but I think the yellow/green cuts faster, while still very fine. I've had a Y/G that had the yellow/green end label on one end, and the same label on the other that said, "guaranteed soft." Indicating a faster cutting rock AFAIK. I had a light green and it was very good too. Sham said his was faster than Y/G. I like a blue/green and I've kept one and go to it from time to time. Appears to me to be slightly slower than the Y/G but , as Lynn said, the difference is subtle. The end result is the same IME. The dark blue is IMO, harder and slower than the others. I had one and sold it to a guy in Europe. It was a very good stone, capable of extremely fine finishing IME, just more strokes to get there.
It is worth noting that the catalog pages that have been printed with prices on the Eschers show the Y/G the most expensive followed by the Light green, blue/green and dark blue. There must have been a reason for the price difference based on the characteristics of the hones differentiated by their color. It wasn't for beauty of one color opposed to another. OTOH, I suppose it could have been for the scarcity, but I still think efficacy was the determining factor. Rare alone isn't worth much if the object isn't intrinsically desirable.
Bottom line , as my grandma used to say, "Handsome is, as handsome does." So whatever the color of a hone, it either delivers the goods or it is no better than a paperweight.