Ebay still good for an interesting hone

I bought this ancient paddle from France last week. It was advertised as a coticule though given the color it could have been a few things. It showed up early today and instantly got interesting. I incrementally shimmed out the end plates with old transit cards and a de razor blade till I could prize them free. I was hoping the nails would answer the age but they are homemade nails made from peening wire. After that, I had to cook it a bit to release hide glue. As usual, that smell had me heaving.. I eventually get it out and it's... different. A pit pingy tap. Light not really passing, strange inclusions. I go to lap it on 120 and it has a pronounced hump but it cones out without some life or death fight but it is damn hard. Go up to 3000 and then burnish with a la verte slurry stone. It is now acting as a mirror at a 90 degree angle. Mirroring as aggressively as my black gila when I experimented with high polish. I have been playing around with some blades on it and this thing is phenomenally fine. I have no clue what it is. It doesn't have the dead ark feel.

I don't have a scope, sadly but this thing gets dragged across every new rock that comes through. Last thing it was on was a great coticule. It obliterated that and absolutely cranked the sharp factor on a blade that was already very much sharp. I am going to finish a wedge on it later and see what the shave is like.

Do you have pictures of the slurry? I took five of my harder PdSO's to the plate (120grit), raised slurries. Varied from so dark it was almost brown to so pale it was almost white... but always "yellow" to my eyes. Here's by FAAAAAR the lightest slurry (normal yellow/orange color stone). It's white until it gets built up pretty thick.

By contrast, most of these stones create slurry that looks dark orange or ochre yellow.
Here's the color that comes up almost instantly on the stone David found for me last week. I'd say it's an average or slightly lighter than average slurry for these stones.

No, it's white like eggshell

Found one more with white slurry. It's actually my darkest green example. Almost white with just a tint of mint/grey.

This thing is like a butterscotch trans and a cf had some superfine baby.

Hmm, interesting. Sounds like a very hard coticule then, they're the only stones I've seen slurry that white.

But it isn't an ark. I would still be killing the hump on an ark using wet dry.

Hold on. Let me kick up the back to slurry

It could also be an early synthetic coticule. Those "worm" squiggles are commonly found in synth coti's and thuri's. I've seen a handful of ridiculously hard synthetic coticules in the past that still lapped reasonably quickly. Does the slurry look like it's got bits of silk in it?

Hmm, that looks about the same as my dark green example to me... remember, a black background is gonna make it look a lot paler than a steel colored one. Let me see if I've got some black wet/dry downstairs.

Here's the slurry off the greenie.

I have had cotis with weird thready soft inclusions that can get torn free from the surface. Real cotis... I have green vermont slate with weird threads as well.

It's hard to say... If it is some world beating thing when I test shave from it, if you want to test it and do some imaging you can be my guest.

Send me a vial of the slurry and I can tell you if it's a coticule or not. But honestly, all slates slurry basically look the same under the scope... so it'll be a binary y/n on coti and not much more.

The shave will tell you a lot more. If it feels like a thuri, I'm gonna say PdSO. If it feels more like a Jnat, I'm gonna say a very fine coticule or something else entirely. The paddle is kind of limiting. So far I've found french slates (and they're rare), PdSO's, Turkey stones, and coticules in french paddles from this era... really nothing else. Not saying there's no chance some French fellow bought a german stone or some other mystery stone and made a paddle for it, but it's a very slim possibility next to the alternatives.

kcb5150 said:

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Hey Keith ! Also slurry reminds me on the "synth Coti" or Pike Beljen i got....

To all of knowledge here:
How sure are we that the Beljen really was a type of Synth/reformed Coticule? Could they be something natural ?

Actually youre paddle looks like a natural stone for sure....

SliceOfLife said:

It could also be an early synthetic coticule. Those "worm" squiggles are commonly found in synth coti's and thuri's. I've seen a handful of ridiculously hard synthetic coticules in the past that still lapped reasonably quickly. Does the slurry look like it's got bits of silk in it?

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The worm squiggles as you sad Ian do appear on the Beljen i got from David and i own a thuri which shows this type of inclusions....

That paddle has so much age it seems to predate the man-made stuff. That was what 1885-95 they started becoming viable?