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I've seen pictures of that site somewhere online, it is a museum now or some sort of protected heritage site, isn't it? (the buildings where the WOAs were cut)? IIRC, there are still piles of stones...

Shame they weren't more widely available then!

I asked the guy to describe the characteristics of the WOA, and he pretty much just said "i don't know, they're just what was traditionally used to polish silver".

I don't know what they've used ...

Did the tams and the water of ayr stones come from the same place? I have a friend who perked up right away when I asked a question about water of ayr, as it was his job to try to get a hold of them...

I've never purchased one of the NW black stones, which are fairly inexpensive if they don't have the "black trans" label applied to them.

Dans feels that the black is their finest stone, but I...

If you have a set of dial calipers and an accurate postal scale that does mg, you can get the volume of a regularly shaped stone pretty easily. I don't suppose most people have a dial caliper,...

All of the novaculite stones refuse to release particles in regular use, other than the odd particle here or there. The pike washitas at some point had stickers on the end that said "hard and fine"...

Definitely no reason to check SG on a hone that you're happy with. The standards are probably there centuries old because the original sellers would sell soft stones as hard to get a higher price,...

Use something that's flat and made of hardened steel to break in the surface until it feels like it is almost not cutting and putting a good polish on hardened steel. Any inexpensive hardware store...

What neal said. When you're comparing novaculite to novaculite, it's a pretty good indicator (not of hardness, but fineness due to lack of open space in the stone matrix). When you're comparing...

Quoting my own post since rereading it, it could be misleading. They are variable in the 2.7+ SG range (and maybe below) but "very variable" for novaculites would be nothing compared to the...

This is the best test, above and beyond SG (I guess the SG does, though, at least confirm that you're getting what you've paid for).

It's a decent indicator of the fineness of a novaculite stone when compared to another novaculite stone if they're in the same shape (e.g., lapped fresh with a diamond hone or right off of a factory...

2.84 is definitely way into the density range for the true hard/black/translucents and has plenty of potential. hard arks are so variable that from that point, it really comes down to how you...

I'd recheck the measurement on the one that was 3.23.

Of all of my stones, all have fallen between 2.6 and about 2.85. A little more than 2.85 is probably possible, but I don't know if 3.23 is....