Thread: Belgian "Deep Rock" Hone

This is Howard and Bruce with a few of my Belgians

Good Lord,, any chance of a run-through of whats on the table. I can see a red "Scotch hone" box I think?

I think I see a coticule, maybe.

Well, I guess I might have been wrong about using it. Maybe the safety deposit box isn't such a bad idea after all!

Best the camera can do.
Use it or keep it locked away?

Yep, that looks just like the one I have stashed away. It is a 2 sided natural that was quarried on the seam of the deposit. Those are rather scarce.

The one that I use has the 2 natural stones glued to each other.

Yours is the 3rd Deep Rock I have seen in 5 years.

Do you think the Deep Rock is actually any different from other coticules or is it just a brand name on it?

It does feel harder than the other coticules. That does not mean it is finer or better. Perhaps someday I will be able to answer that but not for quite awhile.

Keep your eyes peeled guys, there are more of them out there!

The line between the two stones seems more blurred than usual, is that usual for the "deep rocks", Randy?

I remember seeing a guy that had one that looked VERY similar on KifeForums.com, but the Coticule side had been worn through to the Blue side in a few spots.

In the old geological textbooks there are references to a Belgian "old rock" mine. There was a specific French name for it as well, but I can't remember it. Probe around with google books maybe.

The old rock mine was generally recognized for quality coticules. I don't think the idea was that everything that came out of it was distinct from everything that came out of other Belgian quarries, or that an "old rock" coticule is a distinctly different hone from the regular kind. I think it was just that that particular quarry was recognized as a cherry, a regular source of high-quality stones until it closed.

I don't have one and have never tried one. But I was interested in them for a while (I lost that bid to Randy!), so I read up as much as I could find on them. That was the gist of what I could find – it's not that an "old rock" hone is a different hone in itself, it's just that what came out of that particular mine was recognized as being on average a very high quality.