So, at dinner the other night, my brother goes to sharpen his carving knife, and pulls out his "worn out old sharpening stone"
I did a double take as he started drawing the blade across a very very well used coti!
Needless to say, I convinced him to give this up to me as part of a trade. (I gave him a nice new carborundum stone)
Its way harder than I thought it would be, and looks like polished marble. Its terribly dished. The corners are after 5 minutes of circles on a piece of 220 grit emery.
I will win over this stone eventually, but, I have 2 questions...
1) should I be keeping the "dust" to make slurry with in the future? or might the metal dust mixed in with it from years of knives be a detriment?
2) the backside is heavily gouged. Is it worth it to clean this up, or is the backside not really made for honing anything and its just some kind of backing?