Quote Originally Posted by hatzicho View Post
AlanII,

this stone was one of my first thuringians ever - years ago. I received it from the daughter of an old german barber.
It is indeed a little bit special, it is not as soft as yellow or ligth green ones and feels also a bit different in honing to the grey-blue ones. But it is clearly a slate stone and from the honing capabilities, the slurry as well as the surface structure and the amount and size of quartz particles you see through a microskope clearly an upper-devonian age thuringian stone.
It was long time my favorite finisher.
My thoughts on this hone is, that it may not come from one of the three large mines in Steinach/Thuringia, but one of the smaller quarries that existed in the area around and that have been explored later in the 20th century. But that is of course only guessing and hard to prove by comparing samples from the old mine dumps to the hones.
Also I still don't have an explanation to the special form of the stones. It seems to be really waste of material to cut the edges in this way.
Could be a special application or a unique selling point. Maybe someone else has an idea!
May I ask what replaced this hone as your favorite finisher?