Hone discovery

Hey all!

While rummaging through my in-laws' shed, I found an old sharpening stone, and it doesn't list any grit information on it at all, and a quick internet search didn't yield anything useful -- I was wondering if you folks could help me out.

It comes in an old-looking orange box, and the front reads "Sun Tiger Sharpening Stone, No. 30". On the side is "Matsunaga Stone Co. Ltd., Osaka, Japan". It has two sides, a coarse and a fine -- but both appear to be too coarse to be of any use to a razor (thought the fine side *feels* similar to the 4000 side of my Norton Waterstone, and is possibly finer). It looks to be about 7" X 2" X 1".

Have any of you heard of a stone like this? Is it water or oil lubricated? Does it have any practical use beyond sharpening kitchen knives?

Thanks,

Justin

There are probably hunfreds of old stones with various name brands on them made here in the U.S. Add japan and other countries and you have a problem finding out what the grit is. You might contact the japanese woodworker located in the San Francisco area. They might have some knowledge or be able to point you in the right direction.

I have a couple of Sun Tigers in my collection. They are artificial stones and are used with water as a lubricant. Sun Tiger is a large producer of carborundum stones in Japan if I remember correctly. They are still in business and no, they're of no use for honing razors. They do have some awesome labelling on the box!

Matsunaga makes Sun Tiger and King hones that are very popular with members of Nassrasur.com (German wet shaving site).

Not too expensive on German ebay, retailers listing them time and again: http://cgi.ebay.de/SUNTIGER-japanisc...QQcmdZViewItem and http://cgi.ebay.de/King-jap-Schleifs...QQcmdZViewItem

For King hones (which AFAIK are similar to Sun Tigers but longer: http://cgi.ebay.de/KING-Kombi-jap-Sc...QQcmdZViewItem

This latter stone weighs more than one kg (2.2 lbs) according to the seller as you can read just above the large picture in the item description.

AFAIK they are similar to Nortons in the sense that they need to be soaking wet before use.