Thread: $5 "thing"-will need your help

Hello all good people,

Today I was on the field trip and on the way back I have noticed Swap Meet market so I decided to stop and look for some razor. I found one guy which had few razor with crazy price tag on it, so I said… eeeh no but then I have noticed something else (picture below) He asked $5 so I said let me buy it as it looks like hone.
This “thing” (I say thing as I don`t know what material even is that) looks to me like two side hone. One (more abrasive) is thinner and other is thicker. More abrasive side is difficult to determinate grade but looks like 1-2k+ or 4-6k (after small flattening) and other … extremely smooth! I have chines stone 12k and this “think” feels 50% smoother that Chinese stone.

I have tried to clean it but it is very oily. Looks like it was oil stone or it is just dirty old oil from time stamp… means no one took care of this “thing” and was left in some kind of oil. One thing for sure… I have tried to flatten this “thing” and my Norton flattening stone and was barely able to remove surface. I think it is stone, very hard stone. Where surface was removed thicker part becomes VERY smooth. Looks I will need to spend some time to polish surfaces and clean it up… and this is my question-is this worth it?

Is this even honing stone? Maybe it is knife (which I personally cannot see it to be as is not very abrasive for knife) sharpener? How about chipped edges? If is not water stone (I think I determinate this as during washing this stone has not absorbed any water) would be this natural stone covered with oil?

Please help to answer me this questions. I know it is difficult to tell from pictures what we dealing with…

Regards

Soak and wash it with kerosene, and then I'll take a guess.

I will give my amateur guess;
a very abused carborundum, due to what appears to be different degrees of grit on the side photo.
If it is "caked" with grease/oil and hardened over the years, it will not absorb water.
Use the kerosene as stated above and try extra-strength EZ-Off on it for at least 1 hour. Wash and scrub, then evaluate again.

I would say that what I got could be this (Carborundum 333)

Looks like an older carborundum or even norton abrasive stone.
One side looks a little red so it may be a Norton Combination India Stone
( aluminum oxide abrasive).

Soak it in a cleaner like oven cleaner, paint remover, solvent, kerosene
anything that cuts the dry varnish from common shop oil. Scrub it with
common Comet and a green scotch brite...

I have a couple of them and they come in handy the fine
side is about a 600 mesh grit and the coarse about 300.
When a 1000 grit hone cannot get the chips out if
flat enough it will leave a razor 1K hone ready.

Use oil with an oil stone... just clean the razor well
before the water stones.

Looks to me like a Thing-urian

OK,

I have done all what was requested. Here are few more pictures. Still no idea what is it however I can tell that now surface feels like anything below 1000 grit. Looks like it will be good stone for setting bevel

I wouldn't use that for your razors unless you have an old junkie that you can experiment with.

Like an old razor from Pakistan:-)?

An update,

I have tried several times to lap this hone and I failed. It will "eat" any sand paper in few seconds when used, Norton flattening stone... let`s forget, even didn`t took a bit of it. It looks to me like yellow part is a stone, yellow stone where brown part is some artificial material. Yellow part become very smooth (in some places) like my C12k stone. Interesting... what is this? Anyone has idea?

Best regards