Thread: Green UK stone

Another hone picked up off Ebay. I'm thinking Llyn Idwal or Charnley Forest - what do you think?

It is a very hard stone. Took a while to lap it flat, leaving a white/green slurry.

It is a striking, light, pale green with dark green veins and dots throughout. One end has a pink colouration and a possible pyritic inclusion, which may also be in one of the veins.
There are sparse reflective sparkling particles embedded in the material, which only show up when held up to the halogen light in the bathroom - consistent with other UK hones I have (Tam o Shanter, Charnley Forest/Llyn Idwal).

I've not seen another stone like it.
Dimensions are 9.6 x 1.8 inches.

It had been covered in old oil residue and indeed, using WD40, it was a very smooth hone that eventually produced very fine, cloudy beige slurry. A very slow, cutter, hardly removing any metal. Many laps were required to get the slurry to darken.

Produced a smooth, semi-polished edge, that sliced chin hairs off, dry, without little pull.

Not tested it for a shave yet - maybe tonight.

That looks very pretty. I'm afraid I am not qualified to say anything else about it. Just that it's very pretty and I want one. Thanks for posting.

Doent look like any Charnley I have seen.

I have not seen one like that either. However ther supposed to be lighr green colour hone for final polish and is called Cuttlers Green. If it is one then you have hit a jack pot.

It is not a Charnley. I hope it's a good finisher for you.

Not a Charnley and doesn't look like a Lynn Idwal either. I've seen heavy inclusions like yours in Turkey Oil Stones before, but can't remember the color of those. I do recall that they were fairly decent finishers though.

No, it's not a Turkey stone. I have, and have seen hundreds of them(Turkish oilstones) Extremely fast but not the best of the best finishers. It doesn't look like anything I have ever seen, although it has a faint pattern of the Idwal stones, but those veins are confusing. It could be an Idwal or something from the same quarry, but since nobody knows how a cutler's green stone looks like, you can say you have one and so far, nobody can say the opposite

It looks more like a Tam to me. Never seen a CF like that nor does it match any description of a cutlers greenstone I have ever seen. If the strata cracked after hardening and the lines were infiltrated with something else that flowed into them, which hardened over time, then that could give this sort of result.

I had one like that, but only a corner of it had that type of veining, although what the next hone along looked like beggars the imagination. Here is the one I am talking about - it is quite variegated in nature, but what natural processes were about at the time of first deposition, during the main body of deposition and at the end of deposition can only be conjectured. I would imagine that most extreme examples would come from near the beginning and near the end of deposition:-







Some parts of it looked a bit like the more extreme examples of LI, but it did not hone like an LI (or what now seems fashionable to call a 'grecian' although I doubt the stones ever left the British Isles, much less took up greek residence) - it cut like a Tam.

Regards,
Neil

It has been confirmed that the Grecian hones are from the same Llyn Idwal quarry, nothing to do with Greece, the name was a trademark or something like that. We have to find some old miners of those mines, they will be able to answer us many questions, assuming that they are alive. I didn't had the chance to use a TOS hone, are they hard enough to be compared with the CFs and LIs as the above? I suppose there are variations, but I don't think they are so hard, green colored, fine-slow and big as this one. But of course I can be wrong, and you have more experience than me.

This stone of mine looks like yours. It came with 2 lightgreen Llyn Idwals (like the Grecian and Neil's ToS) and two darkgreen LIs, a big one and a slipstone. The speckles don't match any of them but I suspect it still is some type of LI.




It's about time someone takes a picture of a confirmed Cutler's Green.

Btw wai, I looked again at that other stone of yours and I'm leaning towards CF now but I'm not sure. If you post it in the Hones forum or in this thread maybe some of the others can figure it out