Mueller's Water Grindstone

Interesting pic. I believe I've seen the Mueller's water grind-stone label underneath a similar white label as shown, but the white label was marked "Herbertz" rather than "Fazo."

Around five years ago, a French seller was selling the Mueller's Water Grind-Stone with the Mueller's label. This he rated something like 5-6k JIS at the time. Later, he introduced MST Thuringians as though they were coming from the same source, but from the present and past discussion here it seems they are not (perhaps his distributor remained the same and he took this to be coming from the same source). This coincided with a new rating of the Mueller's water grind-stones to be 10-12k JIS. I asked him about the change in ratings and he said that he had first gone with the information as given at the time, but having more recently used the stone, had determined it to be much finer. (I believe that the MST Thuringians are rated 10-12k on the box, and this may have caused him to reconsider the Mueller's water grind-stone.) Throughout this time, the seller was also selling 1k/3k and 1k/6k Suehiro synth combos that had been remarked and distributed by Herbertz.

Fatwade can provide the details here, but it seems that Herbertz might be a link to the various sources as a distributor. Is Herbertz still in business? and if not, was it acquired by another party? and if so, by whom?

I personally think that just the times how to deal with "re-branded" Products has changed....during the 50ies up to the 70/80ies i think it was not a big issue to buy a product somewhere, add a own label on top of the Box and sell it as a Re-seller. The example is the FASO in this case. I know that after WW2 Thuringian Stones werent available as easy as before, often another source was used to come over good stones. So to these times they couldnt offer Thuringian Water Hones...

But later in the 80/90ies it was more used to keep details of those businesses as a secret. So probably things have been bought from the same source then rebranded and were sold under the own trademark.

Iam not 100% sure on that, its more a theory then an approved topic. So it could be that stones have been sold just as a Herbertz product without giving any details.

About the MST Thuringians and The Friedrich Müller Water Grindstones coming from the same source iam not aware of that neither i have any information on it. The stones look different in appearance....

In general its hard to give a proper reply to that because in the end we might talk about too much in company details which should not be shared to everybody before there is something like an approvement from Herbertz.

Surely is Herbertz is still active with their business in Solingen.

fatwade said:

I personally think that just the times how to deal with "re-branded" Products has changed....during the 50ies up to the 70/80ies i think it was not a big issue to buy a product somewhere, add a own label on top of the Box and sell it as a Re-seller. The example is the FASO in this case. I know that after WW2 Thuringian Stones werent available as easy as before, often another source was used to come over good stones. So to these times they couldnt offer Thuringian Water Hones...

But later in the 80/90ies it was more used to keep details of those businesses as a secret. So probably things have been bought from the same source then rebranded and were sold under the own trademark.

Iam not 100% sure on that, its more a theory then an approved topic. So it could be that stones have been sold just as a Herbertz product without giving any details.

About the MST Thuringians and The Friedrich Müller Water Grindstones coming from the same source iam not aware of that neither i have any information on it. The stones look different in appearance....

In general its hard to give a proper reply to that because in the end we might talk about too much in company details which should not be shared to everybody before there is something like an approvement from Herbertz.

Surely is Herbertz is still active with their business in Solingen.

Click to expand...

Thanks fatwade. I'll have to take a look at some MST Thuri and Mueller's water-grindstone photo comparisons...

Just some more shots for proving the facts....here is the FMR Friedrich Müller Water Grindstone with the original up to date active article Number.

The Friedrich Müllers Water Grindstone is much more different compared to vintage Thuringian hones. Vintage Thuringians in many cases show a very clean structure, most with no inclusions and rarely fools gold....

Here are some examples of the fools gold (pyrite) inclusions and the surrounded Quartz.





And as said the often show clouded blackish or grey structures:

Gotta say I've not seen a Mueller's WGS as mottled as that last example. One I've got is pretty clean. The other has some pyrite. But I was thinking more along the lines of those newer MSR stones as labelled that are out there.

Yeah that doesn't look much like what I got from Mueller a few years ago. It looks like they're trying to get more "thuri-like" Dark blue material, and accepting a lot of inclusions and flaws to do it. But that's just how it looks, I haven't used one since like 2010.

Mine is inclusion free. It's pre-2000, and possibly older.