Charnley Forest show off your Charnwood

Interesting brown Charnwood.
Here is my brightest and my heaviest. (9"x2 1/8" x 1 1/5" - exactly 1070g).
In the sunlight it has more a turquoise tint than a green and some interesting black lines.
I can not say it is faster or slower than my the others. It is defenitely a very hard, dense and slow stone.
The edges are nice. I have not honed much with it, but at the moment, I can not say there is a
big difference between the edges of my Charns, they are all very sharp and smooth. I only use water with my stones.
The previous owner of my first Charnley said, there was a thick darkgreen layer of fat on the stone. He cooked
it with other stones several ours in water in an industrial pan, but when it arrived, it was not completely oilfree (oil odor).
I cooked it again with much water and detergent and it is oilfree now.
I don´t like oil and fortunately all my Charns work great with water only.

Nice Charnwoods. Do you have more?
So CF don't have to be used only slow. I got an incredible shave last night using
Botan slurry on my labeled CF to remove small micro chips and set a bevel. Then
I raised some Thuri slurry on the CF and got a very nice edge. Finally don't know if
it was needed I did some laps on the Thuri stone light slurry and strop on linen/leather
3 quick passes on Thuri water only then shave. Edge had a coticule smooth jnat Kiita type edge.

Very good, thanks for the advice. I like to play with good toys.
I have one more (9"x1,8"). A nice example of the darker green. It is clean without black or red stripes.
I really like the mahogany box, but in reality, I am opposed to the clearing of this trees.
I think it was never used, no traces of oil.
But I have lapped it ready only recently, so I can not comment. I will soon make a comparison of the different CFs.

Oh wow! I have just tested the Charn see above with my Yae Botan. I am impressed, you can really set a bevel. My very dull razor is now able to shave arm hairs easily. Great advice, thanks again.

So, I have cleaned the stone around. It is 100% homogenous green. No discolorations or inclusions, not even on the back. I think that is very rare.
It was not expensive, I bought it from ebay, it was sold as a slate. I think this is a highest grade sample.

[QUOTESebrazor;8392721]Oh wow! I have just tested the Charn see above with my Yae Botan. I am impressed, you can really set a bevel. My very dull razor is now able to shave arm hairs easily. Great advice, thanks again.[/QUOTE]

Happy to pass on fun info. Speaking of which what do you think of theYae Botan relative to just Botan? I haven't tried Yae Botan and was thinking on it.

Since I have only one (Yae) Botan, I can not make a comparison.
This is definitely my fastest and coarsest Mikawa. It is not really coarse on the Charnley, but the sound and the feeling changes very nice.
I can recomment it after a short time.
I think Yae is a bit faster than the regular Botan.

"Edge had a coticule smooth jnat Kiita type edge."
Just for information, is there a difference between Asagi and Kiita edges from the characteristics?

When I described the edge as coticule smooth jnat kiita type edge. I was trying to relate how a kiita with a bit of softness to it gives the edge a higher level of sharpness
than a coticule yet still super smooth. Alot of people seem to like the really hard jnats and they give a different feel. I would guess most stones with that same level of hardness could give the same type of edge. I just only ever got that from a kiita.

Ah ok, then Kiita is usually a bit softer than Asagi. I have only two hard Asagis, never tried a Kiita.

So, after a few more tests, I can not recommend the CF as bevelsetter 100%.
A normal used blade can be regenerated. But once smaller chips are present, the removal with Botan Nagura is much too low. But nevertheless, it can definitely be one of the best touchup hones.

I am sure the cf and the botan make a difference and even the steal, but I was able to remove small micro chipping visible only with a loop. I don't normally use one this way but it is something different and gives a different final shave. Plus it is fun. How many people use a CF as a one stone hone kind of. Also I used the wide CF which allows very rapid honing speed. I used it like some do a 1K or jnat and it went faster than my fast coticules.

OK, I know you guys love this game of "name that stone" so this is what i bought as a CF. What do you think? It is certainly green but no red and it is on the softer side of Novaculite. It will slurry in 20 laps and it will produce swarf in 30 laps. I went to 50 laps with a gold dollar, (my testing razors), diluting to water. Got a very smooth 8k edge. I think maybe I could have gotten more out of the stone but this is haw I start all of my tests.

It seems like a very nice stone and I really think it is a CF but one never knows for sure.
It had a top on it but I left it off and refinished the bottom. Box and stone looked vintage when I bought them. Stone is glued to bottom. They required a bit of cleaning to see what was there.
Has a name on the end (A.Mason).







Any takers Ian? Peter, Sebastian, Vasilis, Keith?
I know there is a CF expert in this forum I just can't remember who it is?

The sharply rectangular cut charns tend to be harder and late production ones. The early ones are more kahki colored and rounded on the bottom. I talked to neil miller a few times about uk hones when he was alive. There was more out there than we commonly see and buy.

If it is that soft I doubt it is a grecian hone

Looks like a grecian to me. I've got a really hard grecian, but I've also owned quite soft ones. They varied pretty widely in my experience.

I thought Grecian was a brand name? When I say a, soft Novaculite, I am comparing it to an Arkansas. It is certainly not a hard Ark. but I have never used a CF before. It is much harder than a Thuri for instance.

So have we determined it is a CF? I don't remember Henk ever mentioning a Grecian CF in his blog.

Grecian hones are a thing. It looks more like one of those than a cf. I haven't seen a soft one but I don't know everything

Looks like a 4 (Florite) on the Mohs Hardness test. That was on the edge of the stone. I couldn't bring myself to scratch the top.

Grecian- as in Llyn Idwal?