Thread: Dragons Tongue

I am awaiting my new Welsh slate Dragons Tongue with rubbing stone, I am intending on using this in conjunction with my C12. Does anybody have any experience with these?

Yea, Tom, they have been around a while and much is written about them. They were popular a couple years ago, though I don’t know anyone that still uses them regularly in a progression or as finishers.

I have tried a few and they run the gamut of keenness. Generally the green seems to be the keenest with the grey the coarsest, though that can vary depending on the stone and slurry used.

Do buy the largest stone you can afford, some are small and difficult to use.

Learning to hone with natural stones, of unknown grits is a very difficult way to learn to hone, which is why it is not recommended. If natural is how you want to go, a 3 stone Ark progression is the simplest proven method, slow but works.

A good barber hone would make your life a lot easier to maintain a couple razors.

I have a dark grey DT and it works fine as pre-finisher (probably 5-6k). I use mine when I want to use all naturals after the bevel set

I actually started this journey off looking for a traditional barber's hone, I may have been looking in all the wrong places but they all seemed worn and rough looking objects. This particular stone is approx 200*63*15 in dimension.

There is a little deception on going with the actual name Dragon Tounge

There are two readily available out there in ebay land

#1 is the one from Inigo Jones which is a very hard light grey speckled looking slate stone



#2 is the much softer slate being sold by AJ on ebay that is as Rod mentioned is fair pre-polisher


IME I honestly like the one from AJ better for razor work but that is simply an opinion


ps: All Stones are hard when they hit ya in the head hehehehe..... but when we are talking on here the general rule of thumb is Hard means it cannot be scratched with a thumbnail,,, Soft means that the thumbnail can leave a mark

Thanks for the info Glen, didn't know about the thumbnail test for hones.

Originally Posted by Euclid440

Yea, Tom, they have been around a while and much is written about them. They were popular a couple years ago, though I don’t know anyone that still uses them regularly in a progression or as finishers.

I have tried a few and they run the gamut of keenness. Generally the green seems to be the keenest with the grey the coarsest, though that can vary depending on the stone and slurry used.

Do buy the largest stone you can afford, some are small and difficult to use.

Learning to hone with natural stones, of unknown grits is a very difficult way to learn to hone, which is why it is not recommended. If natural is how you want to go, a 3 stone Ark progression is the simplest proven method, slow but works.

A good barber hone would make your life a lot easier to maintain a couple razors.

I've more or less retired my Norton 8K after getting a Dragon's Tongue. I can see why a lot of folks would move them out of the rotation, they're not particularly good finishing stones with an 8K or less type of finish. But I enjoy honing on a natural stone, so after 1K bevel set, or a 4K touch up I move on to the Dragon's tongue.

One side of my Dragon's tongue is highly polished. This side I use exclusively with pure water. The other side I keep roughed up with a DMT 325. I use that side with slurry for getting rid of 1 and 4K stria. The rougher surface and slurry helps speed the process up, and I can work up a slurry without worrying about messing up the surface I went to extreme lengths to polish up and burnish.

Originally Posted by gssixgun

There is a little deception on going with the actual name Dragon Tounge

There are two readily available out there in ebay land

#1 is the one from Inigo Jones which is a very hard light grey speckled looking slate stone



#2 is the much softer slate being sold by AJ on ebay that is as Rod mentioned is fair pre-polisher


IME I honestly like the one from AJ better for razor work but that is simply an opinion


ps: All Stones are hard when they hit ya in the head hehehehe..... but when we are talking on here the general rule of thumb is Hard means it cannot be scratched with a thumbnail,,, Soft means that the thumbnail can leave a mark

It is the one from AJ that I have purchased so I'm glad it is described as such.

Hi
I bought this set of welsh slate. The price suited me
I find the roughly correspond to the published grits.
They are slow cutters but I find they will make a nice edge.
The 8k produces a slurry easily, the maroon 12k makes slurry much easier, The 15k will make a slurry slowly and takes more time than either of the others.
If I want to move a lot of metal my cheap 10K chinese stone is my choice.

How are you establishing the grit of your stones?

Yea, some can finish, but 12-15k seems a bit high for those slates.