Thread: Hello from Aus and UK

I've been reading here for a little while, and know a few members from other places, so thought I'd say hello properly.

I'll probably largely be talking about stones, of which I have far too many. Though I mostly sharpen knives (as part of work), I have started using / honing / restoring SRs in the last few months.

Cheers,

Oli

Hi Oli and welcome. Nice to have you with us although I have to question "too many." Do they fit under your roof? If so then I wouldn't call it too many. Enabling is rampant 'round these parts.

Sounds like you'll fit right in here. I look forward to seeing you around the forum.

Your title mentioned Aus and UK but your location says SA. Is that southern Australia or South Africa?

Welcome to the forum

Bob

Hello Oli, welcome in from lurking out in the cold.

I don't know hardly anything about sharpening knves although i have put a nice edge on my little Victorinox EDC.

I keep a good edge on my razors, good enough for me anyway but I know for sure that there's a lot of guys here that can put a scary sharp edge on one.

Thanks for the welcome guys, I look forward to learning more from people here! I'm still pretty new to razor honing; I didn't find the transition from knife sharpening as difficult as some people say it can be, though I'm certainly still improving all the time. (And I did have the added bonus of my first razor being honed for me by an expert, so I had a benchmark to aim for when doing restorations )

Originally Posted by PaulFLUS

Hi Oli and welcome. Nice to have you with us although I have to question "too many." Do they fit under your roof? If so then I wouldn't call it too many. Enabling is rampant 'round these parts.

Sounds like you'll fit right in here. I look forward to seeing you around the forum.

Your title mentioned Aus and UK but your location says SA. Is that southern Australia or South Africa?

Ah good point, I'll see if I can change that to make it less confusing... I live in South Australia just outside Adelaide, but am from London originally.

At a guess I have around 100 stones, which is 'too many' according to my wife, though I imagine I'm in good company here!

Originally Posted by STF

Hello Oli, welcome in from lurking out in the cold.

I don't know hardly anything about sharpening knves although i have put a nice edge on my little Victorinox EDC.

I keep a good edge on my razors, good enough for me anyway but I know for sure that there's a lot of guys here that can put a scary sharp edge on one.

I actually used to work in the UK wine/restaurant industry, and Victorinox knives were probably the brand I saw most in pro kitchens - they're literally everywhere. Very good knives for not an extortionate amount of money .

Hello Oli and welcome to SRP.
Enjoy the forum.

Pete <:-}

Welcome Oli.

We are a great bunch of enablers and would love to see images of some of your sharpening stones, especially if any of them are rare or exotic.

Welcome to the forum. There are a lot of hone lovers around here that’s for sure. I’d like to see what restorations you’ve been up to.

I've only done three, so be kind, but here goes...

These were all fairly old and rusty, so needed a fair bit of blade work. But the thing I really wanted to do was to see what a traditional western ground SR would be like with a fixed handle. I'm not a big fan of the normal hinged, scaled style, particularly for honing. I don't mind it in use, but I wanted to see if I could make something that was (for me) just as easy to shave with, and better to hone.

First one was a John Heiffor and a bit of an experiment. Stadium oval shape handle from Olive wood, a little bit of Red Mallee Burl, and the black at the end is some of the original horn scales:



Second is a Wilheim Weber and has basically a traditional octagonal Japanese knife handle made from curly Maple with Grey dye in the stabilization, Bocote, and used winemaking oak stave at the end:



Last one is a Bengall, and I pretty much nailed it I think; again an octagonal handle, but I tried to get some angle into the fit to mimic how you might hold a normal razor handle open. That wasn't easy, and this is about as much angle as you can get into one without either making the handle too big, or grinding down the 'tang', which I didn't want to do. It also has more 'neck' on it, which works better. Made from Red Malle Burl, Syrah/Shiraz vine wood, and buffalo horn:

I can certainly do niche stones - I have quite a few kooky things, and just started a thread on the sub forum with some recent acquisitions that I'm not entirely sure of. But here's a few favourites that probably count as rare-ish...

Some old Turkish Oilstones which I use a lot, as they're staggeringly good knife stones (also have an unpictured Cretan stone that Vasilis sent sent me):



Have since got another one, which I think is probably an old Pike Turkey Stone, and is very fine and uniform for an old Turkish:



Recently found very cheaply a stone I'd been wanting for a while. Old green label black ark:



Particularly nice as it was a 5x2 and so the same size as one of my absolute pride and joys - a completely untouched NOS Lily White, also found bizarrely cheaply in Aus:



That's about the only stone which I don't use at all, I tried one side of it once just cos you have to, but I have a few other Washitas I do use, including a nice old Pike LW, and a recent Norton No.1:






[It’s not all novaculites I have, promise, just those happen to be some favourites!]