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Mueller's Water Grindstone

Having relocated to France for a spell, I recently acquired a Mueller's water stone since it was going at a pretty fair price. It's a natural stone from Bavaria, designed for surgical instruments, and is nominally rated at 4-5k. The suggested sequence is slurry, then water, then pasted strops. Anyone have any experience with these?--and are there other grades of Mueller's stones?
 

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I have not but I would be interested in one if they are readily available over there. I am a sucker for hones with labels. :biggrin1:
 
Looks to be the same stones that Neil Miller was selling a while back and Olivia still has in stock

I picked one up in a b/s/t deal on another forum a few years ago which I think was originally bought from Neil Miller.

I can't compare it to to a vintage Escher or Thuringian as I've never tried one but I can say that I get smooth comfortable shaves from the one I have. I've lapped the back which also makes for a nice kitchen knife finisher. It's quite soft and produces a lot of muddy slurry, has nice feedback and is generally rather pleasant to hone on.
 
I bought mine from Rasoir Sabre, located in Nancy, France. Just lapped one side with a 325x DMT and then touched up a Filly no. 12 with it (20 laps on water), and this seemed to smooth out the edge very well. Followed with 40 laps on Dovo red and 8 laps on Dovo black, and an excellent shave was the result.
 
Well, I have one and I can say is a Thuringian, nothing to do with vintage one but always a good stone. Is around 10K in grit range, but you have to lap it because come rough from factory and if you don't lap it is corse like a 400 grit sandpaper !
 
I read an old post elsewhere saying that these deliver good results with a dilucot style honing method. I gave it shot. I killed the edge of a shave ready blade on glass, a few stokes until it would no longer shave armhair. Then I built up quite a thick slurry and done some x-strokes with the occasional circle and half strokes, it was shaving arm hair again fast. I diluted down to a water finish and after stropping on latigo had a nice smooth shave, on par with what I can get with my coticules.

I'm going to try resetting the bevel on a 1k and then going to this stone and see how fast things go.
 

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I recently received one of these stone as a gift. Can you please tell me what would be the grit. In the orignal post says is around 4-5K but someone else says is like 10K.
Thanks !
 
I think they very a good bit on grit and plus it is a natural stone so there is no consistent grit. I will take some using by you to figure out where it fits in the progression.
 
I recently received one of these stone as a gift. Can you please tell me what would be the grit. In the orignal post says is around 4-5K but someone else says is like 10K.
Thanks !

Excuse the pun, but the grit may be in eye of the beholder here. In my OP, the 4-5k reference was what was stated on the site I bought the stone from (i.e., a source that I trust). It works fast at first, perhaps living up to this relative rating or expectation (it's a natural stone, so an absolute grit rating cannot be assigned). Used with a very light touch in the right hands, it may also yield a more polished surface, hence the subsequent ~10k and finishing claims above. A nice stone in any case, perhaps to be followed by coarser pastes leading to finer ones.
 
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I got one of these at a car boot sale for single digits about a month ago. I have yet to use it or even create a slurry with it. There are a lot of Mueller/s around aren't there?
 
I got one of these at a car boot sale for single digits about a month ago. I have yet to use it or even create a slurry with it. There are a lot of Mueller/s around aren't there?

I don't know about a lot, but it has been a staple on the German market over the past several years. Sort of a poor-man's Thuri. I think they're underrated, and I like the edge off mine. Very easy to use. For starters, I would suggest using it instead of a coticule. Lap it to around P320-P400 (European wet/dry grit), no more. Depending on what you may have as synth water-stones, I would say try shaving off it after, say, 1k > 3K JIS. Then try shaving with it off, say, 1k > 3k > 6k JIS. Or, if you have a coticule, then, say, 1k > 3K JIS > coticule > Mueller's WGS. Many think it's coarser than a coticule, a few think its finer than a coticule. For slurries with natural stones, lately I've been using a worn fine DMT rather than a slurry stone. If you use it off 6k JIS or a coticule, then just use it with water.
 
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The Müllers Water Hone is probably a "thuringian" slate which has not its origin in the direct region where vintage Thuringian stones have come from in the past (Sonneberg, Steinach, etc.) . Its said that the quarry is somehwere in the near thuringian Region. The stones are less fine then vintage thuringian stones and i personally prefer to use them after a 6K stone. I also think they are quite fine stones, for me the stone plays in a pre-finishing stage up to a finishing stage, so its what i use it for.

The stones sometimes appear with fools gold and quartz inclusions, also they can show a darker clouded looking structure.
The stones are sold from Friedrich Müller, Ransweiler (FMR) and some of the stones go to Herbertz who in this case is a retailer of those stones. Also other retailers sell these stones, sometimes without labels....

The stones should not be mixed up with the stones Fritz Müller (MST Schleiftechnik) is selling. They are from a different type....

Another post was here already:
http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthread.php/396236-Question-on-MST-Mueller-Stones

Müller Water Grindstone:
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Here is a comparison from an unlabelled stone and the Müllers Water Grindstone:
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I got one of these at a car boot sale for single digits about a month ago. I have yet to use it or even create a slurry with it. There are a lot of Mueller/s around aren't there?

As written above its a slate which is still quarried today so will find quite a lot of those stones on the market.
 
As written above its a slate which is still quarried today so will find quite a lot of those stones on the market.

Does anyone know how long this particular company has been distributing these stones..? I wonder if the older ones varied less in quality, had a different shade of blue/black etc. Mine is pretty dark green / blue but I guess I won't know until I've lapped it and removed the oxidised layer. The guy who sold it said he thought it was from the 50s-60s... But that may well have been sales patter.

"A lot of Mueller's"
I was really referring to all the different producers / distributors mentioned in other post who are named Mueller, as you mentioned above (see link).
http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthread.php/396236-Question-on-MST-Mueller-Stones
 
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Does anyone know how long this particular company has been distributing these stones..? I wonder if the older ones varied less in quality, had a different shade of blue/black etc. Mine is pretty dark green / blue but I guess I won't know until I've lapped it and removed the oxidised layer. The guy who sold it said he thought it was from the 60s... But that may have been sales patter.

"A lot of Mueller's"
I was really referring to all the different producers / distributors mentioned in other post who are named Mueller (see link).
http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthread.php/396236-Question-on-MST-Mueller-Stones
 
Does anyone know how long this particular company has been distributing these stones..? I wonder if the older ones varied less in quality, had a different shade of blue/black etc. Mine is pretty dark green / blue but I guess I won't know until I've lapped it and removed the oxidised layer. The guy who sold it said he thought it was from the 50s-60s... But that may well have been sales patter.

"A lot of Mueller's"
I was really referring to all the different producers / distributors mentioned in other post who are named Mueller, as you mentioned above (see link).
http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthread.php/396236-Question-on-MST-Mueller-Stones

Its quite difficult to give a proper statement to your questions, if somebody would know it in detail its Friedrich Müller, Ransweiler himself. The issue is that f.ex. the Article Number from Herbertz stayed during the times, but the stones or varieties which were sold under the article nr have changed. So what you will find today under Herbertz Article (Art. 292715) is different what was sold in the past..

An example is the FASO Water razor hone, which surely had a visual difference in its packing, but it had the same article number under Herbertz....so today youll find a Müllers Water Grindstone under this number, in the past Herbertz sold a FASO which was sold from Fassbinder & Co, Solingen to Herbertz.

So i think its impossible to rule out that no other stones were sold in the Müllers Water Grindstone packaging. My guess would be that around the 90ies or probably a bit later the stones (Müller Water Grindstone) have been sold from FMR.

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That is all excellent and fascinating information. Thank you. I will be in Germany at some point next year, so I may have to send some introductory emails, take a de tour and look at some address labels :D .

Its quite difficult to give a proper statement to your questions, if somebody would know it in detail its Friedrich Müller, Ransweiler himself. The issue is that f.ex. the Article Number from Herbertz stayed during the times, but the stones or varieties which were sold under the article nr have changed. So what you will find today under Herbertz Article (Art. 292715) is different what was sold in the past..

An example is the FASO Water razor hone, which surely had a visual difference in its packing, but it had the same article number under Herbertz....so today youll find a Müllers Water Grindstone under this number, in the past Herbertz sold a FASO which was sold from Fassbinder & Co, Solingen to Herbertz.

So i think its impossible to rule out that no other stones were sold in the Müllers Water Grindstone packaging. My guess would be that around the 90ies or probably a bit later the stones (Müller Water Grindstone) have been sold from FMR.

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