Thread: Hone Identification Please

I picked this up at a local watch & clockmaking auction last week end for £2

It's yellow in colour and feels very fine. Unfortunately it's been used with oil
Any ideas guys?

Itis a turingian hone Enjoy

Send me that dirty old hone.

Lap it. I think you'll find a fine Escher all the gunk. You got quite a bargain.

The label indicates Escher but you color claim indicates confusion. Are you certain that the hone is yellow and the "gunk" is grey? Is it possible that the hone is grey and said gunk is yellow?

yeah please point out more details on the coloration...actually its possible that this could be a kind of yellow thuringian Stone

As you can see somtimes there are more yellowish inclustions or the layer itself comes from a yellow layer

Yea, that is probably brass swarf, and the stone is black or dark grey.

Try tapping on the end of the wood base with a small hammer, if the stone is not glued in it will pop out, may take a few lite taps to break the seal of years of swarf.

Then you can clean the stone and box with degreaser like Simple Green or 409. Soaking the stone will remove it all, though it may take a week or so. I would unscrew the hinge and remove the lid and keep dry, a labeled Escher is worth a lot more than an unlabeled Thüringen stone.

If it is glued in, many of the smaller ones are, usually with hide glue, water or heat will loosen the glue, soak in water & cleaning solution or heat in an oven.

Nice find, should be a finisher. What is the size?

Thanks for all the replies guys.

I never even considered that the yellow colour was swarf and the black was the stone!
I have left the stone at my Horology class. I will pick it up next week and get to work as suggested.

Once I've lapped it I will get a better picture of the stone
I will proceed with the restoration as advised...Thanks!

The stone measures around 1" x 6"

Be really careful getting that stone out.

I have a very similar rock in an identical box. Finger pressure was all it took to shear my rock in half, half in my hand the other half still glued in!

The rock was salvageable, It got glued back together. And to get the glued in part out I resorted to stripping the box. Removing the sides then the front and back area so I could get to the bottom of the stone. I then tested samples of the glue with some household chemicals to see if anything dissolved it.

Water, Isopropanol, Acetone, White spirit. Acetone in my case dissolved the glue but not all glues are the same so be careful and do a test on glue scrapings to find something that works. Once I had my chemical I soaked the wooden base and let it sit, Periodically i would check the glue edges with a scraper to see if it was penetrating. After a couple of hours the stone came away nice and clean. I let the box dry thoroughly and rebuilt it, and fixed the stone with some 2 part epoxy glue.

Sage advice Blake, as much as these stones bring nowdays it really pays to be extra careful with them.

Sebastian, that bottom stone in post#6 is way cool looking, is it an thuringian??