[The following posts are copied from some I made a few days ago on B&B. Note that of the stones I mention; it's only the final one - the Penrhiw Hone - that I think is particularly good for general purpose kitchen knife edges. The others are all slates and give high-level, refined finishes, more suited to razor honing, yanagiba, or fine polishing].
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The United Kingdom, perhaps even moreso than Japan, can lay claim to having the greatest breadth, depth, and sheer number of historically quarried whetstones of any nation on earth. And the jewel in the crown of The Union is, undoubtedly: Wales!
From the Cambrian silkstones of the south, to the sandstones of Gwespyr and Waun y Llyn on the northern coast, via the blue slates of Aberllefenni, the green and purple stones of the Nantlle Valley, and the famous novaculites found alongside - nowhere else in the world will you encounter such variety of traditional honestones in such a small geographical area as there are here.
Better go to Wales then...
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My primary objective was to establish for certain the origin of the Nantlle Valley Stone, which I had spent some time researching previously. Information on the ground had the Dorothea quarry at Talysarn as a likely candidate, so we positioned ourselves there. And the task proved somewhat easier than expected, we had arrived at night (Wales has effectively no motorways), but going out for a breakfast cigarette in the morning I saw this.
That's basically a massive slab of Nantlle Valley whetstone on the outside wall of our Airbnb. So there we go: the Nantlle Valley Stone is from Dorothea. But we hadn't come to Wales to steal bits of people's houses, not when the quarry is but a couple of minutes walk away.
Dorothea is stunningly beautiful, now flooded as a lake*, set within an old forest full of crumbling, overgrown, buildings from the works there. And there is slate bloody everywhere.
And it turns out that the slate at Dorothea it quite varied; the large majority is purple, but within that are seams of green rock, sometimes thick, sometimes thin.
I tried to pick up as much variety as I could, including some pre-cut pieces I found in one of the abandoned buildings above.
This next picture is a piece of more typical Nantlle Valley Stone, a dark sea-green-blue colour with wavy black patterns. This seemed to be the least common type, though there was so much stone everywhere that it wasn't difficult to find anything. I was shooting fish in a barrel.
And finally something that surprised me a little. This is slightly lighter coloured green stone, with pretty, black, crack-like patterns through it. Which you might normally associate with stones from the Glanrafon quarry(s), about seven miles away at the other end of the Nantlle Valley, or even the Fiddich River Stone, but something similar is clearly found at Dorothea too. Like the type above it's a very hard stone, and fine enough for razor finishing.
The second picture below is a whetstone I cut from the rock in the first pic. About 6x3", but so feckin hard that I gave up making it into a perfect rectangle.
* There are actually a couple of pits at Dorothea, the picture here is of the smaller, I seem not to have taken a picture of the larger one. I was probably too excited by all the slate.
[TBC...]
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The United Kingdom, perhaps even moreso than Japan, can lay claim to having the greatest breadth, depth, and sheer number of historically quarried whetstones of any nation on earth. And the jewel in the crown of The Union is, undoubtedly: Wales!
From the Cambrian silkstones of the south, to the sandstones of Gwespyr and Waun y Llyn on the northern coast, via the blue slates of Aberllefenni, the green and purple stones of the Nantlle Valley, and the famous novaculites found alongside - nowhere else in the world will you encounter such variety of traditional honestones in such a small geographical area as there are here.
Better go to Wales then...
---
My primary objective was to establish for certain the origin of the Nantlle Valley Stone, which I had spent some time researching previously. Information on the ground had the Dorothea quarry at Talysarn as a likely candidate, so we positioned ourselves there. And the task proved somewhat easier than expected, we had arrived at night (Wales has effectively no motorways), but going out for a breakfast cigarette in the morning I saw this.
That's basically a massive slab of Nantlle Valley whetstone on the outside wall of our Airbnb. So there we go: the Nantlle Valley Stone is from Dorothea. But we hadn't come to Wales to steal bits of people's houses, not when the quarry is but a couple of minutes walk away.
Dorothea is stunningly beautiful, now flooded as a lake*, set within an old forest full of crumbling, overgrown, buildings from the works there. And there is slate bloody everywhere.
And it turns out that the slate at Dorothea it quite varied; the large majority is purple, but within that are seams of green rock, sometimes thick, sometimes thin.
I tried to pick up as much variety as I could, including some pre-cut pieces I found in one of the abandoned buildings above.
This next picture is a piece of more typical Nantlle Valley Stone, a dark sea-green-blue colour with wavy black patterns. This seemed to be the least common type, though there was so much stone everywhere that it wasn't difficult to find anything. I was shooting fish in a barrel.
And finally something that surprised me a little. This is slightly lighter coloured green stone, with pretty, black, crack-like patterns through it. Which you might normally associate with stones from the Glanrafon quarry(s), about seven miles away at the other end of the Nantlle Valley, or even the Fiddich River Stone, but something similar is clearly found at Dorothea too. Like the type above it's a very hard stone, and fine enough for razor finishing.
The second picture below is a whetstone I cut from the rock in the first pic. About 6x3", but so feckin hard that I gave up making it into a perfect rectangle.
* There are actually a couple of pits at Dorothea, the picture here is of the smaller, I seem not to have taken a picture of the larger one. I was probably too excited by all the slate.
[TBC...]
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