Thread: The celebrated water razor hone

Here's a new acquisition from the bay.. "The celebrated water razor hone." A vintage thuringian, near as I can tell. Sure looks and feels like the other I have. A very nice stone indeed. Haven't put her to the test yet, but I pulled it out of the box it was glued in and lapped it up.

The inside label of the case it came in. In person, you can pretty clearly tell at the bottom it said "Made in Germany", but someone scribbled it out in pencil. I have no idea why

Dry. It's 5"x1".

Wet.

Next to another vintage thuringian I have (it's 6"x1 3/16")

The box closed.

Nice grab there. I had a chance to use one once, and it would be great to have one of my own to play with.

I have a couple of those. They are excellent hones. I would suspect that the reason "Made in German" was crossed off was because the owner was not a fan of Germany. Perhaps he was a war veteran or a Jew?

Originally Posted by Utopian

I have a couple of those. They are excellent hones. I would suspect that the reason "Made in German" was crossed off was because the owner was not a fan of Germany. Perhaps he was a war veteran or a Jew?

I was thinking the same thing... I wonder if that's really why? Makes it a little more interesting IMO.

Nice hone. I've heard that hones with that mark were made by Escher but I'm not sure. The label on the one I'm referring to was different. One way or the other it is a nice size for warped or smiling blades.

yeah, these are vintage thuringian stones. I have a boxed one like yours mined by Escher and had a couple of others with the regular label that you have (in various colors which I don't think matter much).

should be very comparable to your larger one, but do tell us what you find.

Here is a picture of mine

Congrats! That's a very nice find.

Here's a picture of mine when I just got it (prior to cleaning and lapping) next to one with the Escher cup label:


Edit: Gugi beat me to that one...

Thanks for sharing gugi and Oldengaerde! Oldengaerde, that first one looks to have the same label as this one, just a different color (unless mine is just faded).

Jimmy, I think I recall seeing some other labels when I searched that had more or less the same wording as mine, but had the "E & Co." symbol in the middle. I would think if this one were made by escher it too would have the symbol. Since it has similar wording but no symbol, I assume it's not an escher brand, and I kind of just take it as further confirmation that there were multiple distributors of thuringians, and escher was just one of them. All coming from the same mine, I kind of doubt escher's stones were, on average, much different, if at all, than a hone like this, but alas, I don't have any eschers of comparable color (actually I have no eschers at the moment) to see for myself.

Oldengaerde, since you seem to have both, have you noticed any difference in performance between the two?

Rather novice at razor honing, doubt everything I say about performance on razors.

Nevertheless, I think I can safely say that the Escher one is both finer and harder. The colour difference is also striking, especially when wet: the Escher is near jet black, whereas the red-labelled one is only slightly more grey than yellow-green labelled Eschers. They're the bottom and top one in the scans over here.

Apart from that, the similarity is striking: the boxes are equally sized and constructed exactly the same way (just the hinge differs: two or three nails)(note though, that the joints in Gugi's one differ slightly), the stones differ less than a millimeter in height, breath and lenght, and have similar cutting marks.