Mystery hones... Let's see what you have

[Legion]

Put them in a bag with mineral oil and add more as needed, let them drink until they stop. Kinda like a turkey or Hindo.

They are too porous, especially the coarser ones. Mineral oil will just run out of them, especially when it is hot.

When they say they are “oil filled” on the box, I am fairly sure they use petroleum jelly, or something similar.

I imagine they heat it to liquify it, then soak the stones, maybe use a vacuum. Then at room temperature it gums up the insides and stays put.

 

[timwcic]

A cool piglet from the market. I knew something was hiding under the mung and slurry coating. Looked like a slate that was rode hard and put up wet. Wasn’t expecting what came out of the dip, a purple stone with tiger stripes and green orbs. It is very soft and muddy, keep seizing to the plates. Has a slight taper, 6x 2 1/4 down to 2 1/8. Three sides look original with a black coating and the last side looks whacked with saw marks in all directions. Possible a Vermont or NY slate, but don’t recall running across the extreme stripes before. Maybe a Welsh that really got lost and ended up in Florida

 

[SliceOfLife]

I need to see how it reacts. Something seems off to me but it is also thicker than thuris tend to be so maybe that is also what is confusing me.

Color and pattern do agree with Thuri...

Cut (~7x2") not really, and sawmarks aren't really indicative for or against. I'd lean towards Thuri, but performance would have to prove that out in this case... Not like a 7x1.5 with obvious Thuri sawmarks.


Tim, I think I've got a 12x2 somewhere with those stripes... Not all over, but in spots. It's an ok finisher; but not top tier... I agree probably an east coast slate. (edit: got my stones mixed up... it was a 7x1.5", stripes WERE all over... sold it years ago though... Was soft and flakey... and had a bullet hole gouge/chalky digout in it like you see on Tam O shanters sometimes. It actually was pretty subpar for a slate if memory serves... sold it in a lot of junk stones) I'm positive I posted it here, but we're talking 5-10 years ago... so good luck finding those pics.

 

[SliceOfLife]

Not mine, but found one:

What some call Vosgienne - Show off your rock

Cool! That's a gorgeous stone if I do say so myself. And thanks for all of the historical background and detective work. Very interesting.

www.badgerandblade.com

This may be the stone I'm thinking of... Had green blob in it too:

Escher/Thuringian love. show of your rocks

Very nice, thanks @all for the explanation.

www.badgerandblade.com

 

[Empire straights]

They are too porous, especially the coarser ones. Mineral oil will just run out of them, especially when it is hot.

When they say they are “oil filled” on the box, I am fairly sure they use petroleum jelly, or something similar.

I imagine they heat it to liquify it, then soak the stones, maybe use a vacuum. Then at room temperature it gums up the insides and stays put.

The fine ones are the only ones I've stripped completely, I'd def use petroleum jelly for a coarse one.

 

[timwcic]

. I agree probably an east coast slate.

Thanks for your thoughts

 

[Legion]

The fine ones are the only ones I've stripped completely, I'd def use petroleum jelly for a coarse one.

The last one I did was a 30’s Norton, with a coarse on one side, with a Washita on the other. Didn’t leave a middle option of cleaning.

Vaseline and the wife’s hair dryer. Seemed to work.

 

[Empire straights]

The last one I did was a 30’s Norton, with a coarse on one side, with a Washita on the other. Didn’t leave a middle option of cleaning.

Vaseline and the wife’s hair dryer. Seemed to work.

I've considered making one of those combos.

 

[Marcel1818]

Found this hone in the UK.
Has anyone a guess what stone it could be?
I think it could be a Fiddich.

 

[cotedupy]

Found this hone in the UK.
Has anyone a guess what stone it could be?
I think it could be a Fiddich.

It’s a Grecian Hone. Sweet!

To give you an idea of just how good they are... I dare anybody to get a Chinese cleaver to drop paper towel like this:

 

[Marcel1818]

Thanks, will go reading about it as I never had one. Will hone on it this weekend

 

[Empire straights]

Thanks, will go reading about it as I never had one. Will hone on it this weekend

They're good. The one I have is fine, much like a real. hard ark.

 

[Jefforey]


any ideas of what this is, would it be good for chisels and planes as a finishing stone

 

[kcb5150]

Not a thuri. When I was lapping this thing I was taking it for yet another random slate that will have blah performance and terrible scrapey feedback but the feedback is almost rubbery/silky and the resulting hht and tree topping is at that sort of vicious level that tends to give me pause. It's not hard at all when lapping but extremely dense. 6"x3 1/16"x~13/16, but I probably had to lap 1/16 at least between the two sides. Really caught me off guard because every slate that looked like this has almost to a man been terrible to use and turned out something very uninspiring. All this said, if it is rough as hell and the lather ends up pink I will admit to it.

 

[SliceOfLife]

At this point I almost want to not like shaves off the random slates I buy... because they don't sell for any more as buyers aren't gonna trust you that it shaves great... so unless they're so good they're worth using OVER other stones you WILL keep... say a YG Thuri or your favorite Jnat or what have you... they become a novelty.

"What's that stone?"

"Oh some unidentifiable slate that shaves as well as a Thuri."

"When did you use it last?"

"Uh... lets see... what year did I buy that one?"

 

[LJS]

The abundance of dark mystery slate and the lack of any branding or advertising has always been a puzzling “gap” in the history of hones-stones to me. I guess they wouldn’t be mystery slates if they had that provenance though….. I realize it’s a common stone to come out of mines and a byproduct where I live where they mine coal……but there are many branded slates in UK that are well known for example. There certainly were folks producing these mystery slates for sale but there is virtually no info.

 

[kcb5150]

This one kind of has the dimensions of the dense, fat slates with the wide chamfers and wooden boxes you can sometimes find in spain/portugal but it doesn't really feel like those to be honest.

 

[cotedupy]

The abundance of dark mystery slate and the lack of any branding or advertising has always been a puzzling “gap” in the history of hones-stones to me. I guess they wouldn’t be mystery slates if they had that provenance though….. I realize it’s a common stone to come out of mines and a byproduct where I live where they mine coal……but there are many branded slates in UK that are well known for example. There certainly were folks producing these mystery slates for sale but there is virtually no info.

Hmm, I'm not so sure about this...

How many labelled or branded Charnleys/Idwals/Turkish/Cotis &c. do you see, compared to unlabelled ones? The ratio is probably about the same as for slates, in fact probably higher. It's just that the former are easy to identify without a label, whereas the latter all look pretty much exactly the same and so remain 'mystery' stones.

 

[cotedupy]

The other thing of course is that branding and labelling of whetstones is a relatively recent thing. If anyone can show me a stone label that definitely predates when Pike and WoAToS started doing it at the tail end of the c.19th, then I'd love to see it.

The quarrying of slate as a building material (and hence as a whetstone material) was a far more important industry in the middle of the c.19th century than it was by the middle of the c.20th. And the timeline of that decline also happens mirror the replacement of natural sharpening stones following the synthesis of man-made SiC and Al2O3, also at the end of the c.19th.

A lot of slate whetstones are just old, and came from a time when nobody labelled whetstones. And because slate was a very important building material, and it all looks the same... there are a lot of 'mystery slate' hones out there.

 

[kcb5150]

Mystery hones... Let's see what you have

Those banded slates if they could find them would be a real good bridge stone to sell for someone who goes synth to a point and wants a jump off to natural.

www.badgerandblade.com

Looking at the end saw marks it may well be one of those Portuguese rocks but I don't remember the one in the old post being like that. I still have that one so I should dig it out and a/b it.