Thread: Black Tam O'Shanter or Water of Ayr ?

Hello,

Has anyone heard of or seen a black Tam O Shanter????

Or could this be a "Water of Ayr"? It is a very good finisher, so it could be both
I bought it from ebay.uk.

Thank you and best regards from Munich, Bavaria,

Rainer

On my monitor it looks brown. A WOA is dark gray to black. Black when wet. I've had it in a labeled box with a WOA/Tam combo. Anyway, the true Tam will always have speckles or dots in throughout the stone. This is why it was also known as a snakeskin hone, or something like that. If it has dots it is a Tam.

Thanks, Jimmy.
The colour is dark grey to black, not brown. I'll take a close up tomorrow.

now here are the close ups:




by comparison, my white TOS on same scale:

It's a TAM. The white ones cut more finely than the darker ones - usually!

Regards,
Neil

I had a WOA combo, as previously stated. It had none of the speckles but was a monolithic black/gray. I had a small Tam labeled as a pocket knife hone I got from Coulee, that was black and had the speckles very like the ones in your picture above. So my guess is it is a Tam but it is hard to tell from photos. I'll send a link to to this thread to the guy who bought my WOA and maybe he will opine.

The first two pics are darker Tams. The third is a WoA. WoA have sporadic, rather large darker dots, often linked by hair-thin dark lines.







Regards,
Neil

thank you very much, Jimmy and Neil.
Now I'm sure that I have a very dark TAM O'SHANTER!

I have another stone, pale grey with those sporadic, rather large darker dots Neil mentioned, but not linked by hair-thin dark lines.
Perhaps this is a WoA?

The dots are not always linked by lines. Sometimes you may get just two or three dots on a single hone. I have never seen a very light WoA, but I suppose there could be one. Usually they are slate-grey going on to very dark, almost black when wet. The following are all WoA hones:





Regards,
Neil

That certainly is a lovely stone - thanks for posting the close-up picture. Never seen a WoA like that! I do not think it is a WoA, however.

Is it very hard and glassy? Hard to lap and to raise a slurry on? It looks almost like some sort of LI variant....

Regards,
Neil