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I‘ll get on this thread too 😊
Received a trio of NOS scottish stones from Ayrshire today and can’t wait to give them a test run:
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Gotta love the old drill press boxes. The box on the bottom is my own hack job. Wouldn't recommend Brazilian redwood on the router table at 1/4" thick. That was a scary bit of work I should not have ever done.
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Oh yes! Love an old box (we can't all be as talented as @childermass in that regard, though yours looks pretty swish tbh :)), here are a few of my recent acquisitions:

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And my (sadly holder-less atm) old Norton Hard/Translucent:

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Good looking stones! Did you get them from UK? How good are they on knives?
I got them from a guy in the Netherlands who had bought some old stock some time ago.
I have just shortly tried them without even lapping them so this is really just a first impression:
The hardness of all three is nice, even the yellow one which is the coarsie here is decently stiff. These will definitely be suitable for knives.
As far as I can judge speed and finesse they cut reasonably fast and should make a nice progression from I guess around 500 over 3-4k to 6-7k. Maybe I will have to squeeze in my Wästikivi to bridge the gap between the yellow and blue.
More details will follow as soon as I got to try them properly.
 
I got them from a guy in the Netherlands who had bought some old stock some time ago.
I have just shortly tried them without even lapping them so this is really just a first impression:
The hardness of all three is nice, even the yellow one which is the coarsie here is decently stiff. These will definitely be suitable for knives.
As far as I can judge speed and finesse they cut reasonably fast and should make a nice progression from I guess around 500 over 3-4k to 6-7k. Maybe I will have to squeeze in my Wästikivi to bridge the gap between the yellow and blue.
More details will follow as soon as I got to try them properly.
Looking forward!
 
A couple more recent ebay acquisitions.

The first is a pretty decent sized Hindustan I got for free, because the seller sent it by mistake. Quite fine, and slow, probably around 3-5k.

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This is the stone I actually bought, turned out to be some kind of razor finishing slate I'm fairly sure. This is very fine, and leaves a mega slick, sharp edge. Pretty difficult to ID I think (especially for someone with little experience of this this kind of thing), there are a couple of things that make me lean toward Thuringian or similar, but could be a lot of other things too probably. Any thoughts appreciated...

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And lastly a stone that turned out to be another, smaller, Hindustan I'm pretty sure. Looks a different colour and slightly coarser than the other, but acts very similar, also has some banding at the sides, and the slurry is basically identical (that's mud from the two different stones on my fingers):

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I've only really had one miss so far with my ebay / second hand shop purchases, when one turned out to be a crappy coarse and fine combi, which is going on axe duty. But otherwise have added a whole heap of old natural stones, including the very nice old Turkish Oilstone and Washita above, for a total of about $100 Aus :).
 
So I tried out a degreasing soak on a few of my stones last night, and as @musicman980 advised - I did well to keep an eye on the Turkish Stone, as the colour change was quite drastic in not much time. I didn't use Simple Green, but a similar affair from concentrate, so it might have been a bit stronger. Though the two Washitas I soaked at the same time, had nothing like this quick a change.

You can see before pics on page 1 of this thread. Here it is after an hour soaking, some areas of the stone are bright white, others almost black.

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I thought it looked kind've funky, so pulled it out at this point, as I didn't want to go too long. I then put it in some mineral oil, and within seconds it had returned to almost its original colour:

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And now dry this morning, the stone is a touch lighter in colour than it was before, with some of the details slightly more visible:


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I don't know if it really shows anything more than that the initial soak probably only penetrated the surface of the stone, but did so very quickly. And that Turkish Oilstones are, as people knew already, a kind of very porous, highly heterogenous, novaculite.
 
And this one, which tbh is a little bit of a mystery. I think it is probably another old Turkish Oilstone, though I wouldn't stake much money on that.

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Little job lot I picked up cheap off ebay, and received today. As you can see from the pic on the listing, most were smallish carborundum-type numbers:

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But in amongst them a few gems. First up this 1940s (I think) Norton Hard / Translucent Ark. This isn't a full size bench stone, but it's big enough - an HB 24 - 4" x 2". It's also barely used, which is nice.

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This Tam O'Shanter stick thing. God know's what I'd ever use it for, but nice to have a labelled old TOS nonetheless:

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And then the one that made me very happy indeed. This is the stone in the top left hand corner of the first picture, which I kinda hoped possibly might be something interesting. And after a bit of cleaning...

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:)
 
Little job lot I picked up cheap off ebay, and received today. As you can see from the pic on the listing, most were smallish carborundum-type numbers:

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But in amongst them a few gems. First up this 1940s (I think) Norton Hard / Translucent Ark. This isn't a full size bench stone, but it's big enough - an HB 24 - 4" x 2". It's also barely used, which is nice.

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This Tam O'Shanter stick thing. God know's what I'd ever use it for, but nice to have a labelled old TOS nonetheless:

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And then the one that made me very happy indeed. This is the stone in the top left hand corner of the first picture, which I kinda hoped possibly might be something interesting. And after a bit of cleaning...

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:)
Oh wow, that's nice!
It's really hard to tell what's lurking under old oil and grime.
 
Oh wow, that's nice!
It's really hard to tell what's lurking under old oil and grime.

Aye! Impossible to tell from the pictures, but as soon as I unwrapped it I was pretty excited. I love these stones :).

The little Norton ark is very cute as well, and looks like it's barely been used. The surface feels raw, and there's no oil or dirt on it, or the paper bits in the box.
 
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