My new natural stone

Awesome Nelson, somebody got the same result as me for once! Lol, I get really great shaves from this stone. I like a really sharp edge, and this stone gets it there without being too harsh. Sounds like it's even better with a little slurry. My ATG pass is zero pressure with the blade flat against my skin, and it gets the job done wonderfully.

I personally don't often use the rubbing stone to raise slurry, as the stone is hard enough to make it a pain in the butt.

I found another neat stone by the same lake that is showing some promise as well. It's also quite hard and fine but cuts really quite fast with water slurry. All of the stones I've gotten from this location seem to cut really well on slurry as long as enough is raised up. I need to get some spare razors that I can use for testing so I can stop using this chisel and test pieces. You can see on the chisel that this stone leaves the different finish on hard and soft steel like a Jnat - the line where the heat treat stops is clearly visible on the 45° angled part of the chisel - that's not just a differing reflection or light level (I honed it there and on the convex bevel with the new stone).

Wow, better than expected. Just touched up a razor I honed on a Jnat the other day as it wasn't quite where I wanted it - it was hitting HHT3 or so, shaved comfortably but not as close as I'd like. Touched up on slurry on this grey stone from my last post - I think about 40 or 50 laps until the slurry darkened up a good bit, then a quick 10 laps on cloth strop and 50 laps on plain hanging leather - it's nailing what I would call a solid HHT5. Dead silent, very nice. Probably won't be able to shave test until tomorrow night.

Shave complete. It's definitely improved over my previous edge but still not perfect. Did great WTG, but still not as close as I'd like ATG. I think I also biffed my stropping preshave though. I do know I definitely need more practice with slurry honing.

Cool looking rock. Love these found on the ground hone stones.

Well, all my PIF honings are DONE.... no more for a long time...

Now it's time to work on this little stone of yours!

Yeah I love them too, never thought I'd be doing this, but it's kind of fun. This grey stone reminds me a lot of my Jnat but even harder. Raising a slurry on it with even a diamond plate takes some time. There's no way in hell I'd have even gotten it flat with a diamond plate without spending a week on it probably. Very glad I've got the lapping plate and SiC grit. I have the remainder of the rock I cut it from too, I'm going to cut a couple more normal size slices to play with and see if I can get one without the fissures.

Jeremy, looking forward to hearing how it goes. I had a fair few testers but not many shave reports.

Oh, one more interesting thing regarding the grey stone - it appears to have quite a lot of small inclusions, non toxic. They appear to be gold.

Thar's gold in them thar hones.

Haha, most likely just something gold colored, I've read that there can be mica flakes that are gold colored. Could be pyrite too, I don't have enough magnification to get a close look at it - under my 30x scope the inclusions are still quite small, I can poke the tip of a steel scriber into it and smoosh/pull it out but it's not clear at 30x what the shape of the stuff is.

Here's a couple shots of the raw stone if anyone is interested. The sedimentary layering is very evident in person but it doesn't seem to show quite as well in the photos.

I'll take one

I'm open to trades! I'd love to get a few different stones to feed the HAD; coticules, Jnats or whatever. I recently got a trade for a Jnat, then another for a couple Thuris. I'm open to trade offers for sure. I think this S.O.B. grey stone killed my diamond cutoff wheel too, man they are a b!tch to cut and lap!

eKretz said:

Haha, most likely just something gold colored, I've read that there can be mica flakes that are gold colored. Could be pyrite too, I don't have enough magnification to get a close look at it - under my 30x scope the inclusions are still quite small, I can poke the tip of a steel scriber into it and smoosh/pull it out but it's not clear at 30x what the shape of the stuff is.

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My first Apache had gold flakes (also probably pyrite) in the chamfering and the unsurfaced sides. The replacement didn't that I could notice. Was something I thought may be related to the differences in the stones.

That raw stone looks like surgical black ark meets flint.

Possibly. I got mine replaced also, but neither of mine has any inclusions anywhere. My first Apache really didn't do much of any cutting that I could tell, and I tried to make it easy by following a 325 DMT with it - still no swarf at all. I even tried an Apache slurry, that got it to cut but just barely. Like 1000 laps got me just a tiny smidge of gray on a paper towel wipe. This found grey stone cuts WAY faster than any of the others I've found but is still very fine. On slurry it darkens up almost immediately, straight water polishes very similarly to my hard Jnat on straight water, and the stone glazes over similarly also, but doesn't self-slurry like the jnat.

Oh, and before anybody thinks it's easy to find these stones - I've probably cut up 50 stones to find 3 good types of stone usable for honing.

eKretz said:

Possibly. I got mine replaced also, but neither of mine has any inclusions anywhere. My first Apache really didn't do much of any cutting that I could tell, and I tried to make it easy by following a 325 DMT with it - still no swarf at all. I even tried an Apache slurry, that got it to cut but just barely. Like 1000 laps got me just a tiny smidge of gray on a paper towel wipe. This found grey stone cuts WAY faster than any of the others I've found but is still very fine. On slurry it darkens up almost immediately, straight water polishes very similarly to my hard Jnat on straight water, and the stone glazes over similarly also, but doesn't self-slurry like the jnat.

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My results exactly. My first stone didn't cut anywhere near as well as the replacement. The replacement, while still very hard, has a soft texture to the surface that reminds me a bit of a soft thuri. It "feels" soft, though it is hard; for lack of a better way to phrase it. Honestly, I'd suspect it's two different stones from the same cropping, they're that different.

Yep. Mine is the same. First one was a very light beige, second one that cuts better is more greyish but slurries pink! Probably iron oxide in the stone I'd guess. It is exactly as you describe, still pretty hard but feels much softer and like it's actually getting some bite on the steel.

I still haven't slurried my replacement, never needed to, which is a good thing. I'll try and see if it slurries pink like yours.

edit: Nope. Just white slurry. Stone also works better without slurry than with. Much of the slurry is really small, but there's some bigger pieces it's better not to have knocking around there on my stone. And the slurry from my first stone contains much larger and odd shaped (look like those long homegrown crystals) bigger pieces, on top of being harder. Not hard to see why the replacement works so much better.

I didn't actually need to use my replacement stone on slurry either, just noted the pink color when I lapped it flat.

Did some more playing around with the "found" grey stone and I like this one more and more. 300 laps light to medium pressure turns the slurry from white to absolute pitch black, and gives a very barely hazy mirror - almost exactly the same finish as my hard Jnat. With the stone being so hard though it doesn't go out of flat anywhere near as much as my Jnat. Really cool stone. I also did a few tests on the inclusions - mercury will dissolve gold and I happen to have some so I tried putting a ball of mercury on top of one of the inclusions after scraping it with a scriber. Didn't dissolve anything. Then I stuck a rare earth magnet to the scriber and it made the loose bits move, so I'm thinking they are pyrite inclusions.