The Washita Thread

[stringer]

Nice pickups @stringer ! The arks look pretty lovely, but that old Washita is sweet af!

(p.s. I owe you money! Ping me payment deets...)

No worries. I haven't been moving around much the last month. I'll get it to you soon. I knew what this one was as soon as I saw it but I cleaned it up a bit before I posted just to be sure. They can look so similar to Indias in the wild. Here's what the eBay ad looked like.

 

[cotedupy]

No worries. I haven't been moving around much the last month. I'll get it to you soon. I knew what this one was as soon as I saw it but I cleaned it up a bit before I posted just to be sure. They can look so similar to Indias in the wild. Here's what the eBay ad looked like.


View attachment 176489

That's a good spot! I'm not sure I would have been confident enough to go for it just on the initial pic, as you say - an India stone can do a very good impression of this kind of thing.

 

[cotedupy]

I get asked about Washitas a little bit (quel surprise!), especially when I'm letting any of the collection go on BST, and one aspect I always try to explain or point out is how they differ in use from synthetic waterstones that people might be more familiar with.

So today I made a little intro video, which hopefully explains a little about them for anyone unfamiliar, and shows how you can take a knife from badly blunted and beaten up, to clean drop-cutting kitchen towel in under 2 mins. I'm pretty rubbish at talking on camera, but I think it covers the basics.

 

[captaincaed]

A promising thrift find this weekend....

 

[cotedupy]

A promising thrift find this weekend....View attachment 176589

Very smart find!

By about a mm you have enough of that label left to be able to tell it’s a Lily White .

 

[cotedupy]

Everybody up for some fun learning time with regards @captaincaed ’s stone above? Very well then, here we go...

That's the remnants of a blue 30s/40s era mounted Norton Washita label. At the time, after the takeover of Pike, they immediately cut the range of Washitas to just LW and No.1, but apart from that wording the labels are identical. And we can't see any of the words there, so how do we know it's a Lily White...?

The labels read either 'Lily White Washita' or 'No.1 Washita', with 'Oilstone' underneath. And the former is longer than the latter, so the lettering extended past the Norton Abrasives graphic above it. On CC's stone this bit I've circled is the final part of the 'A' at the end of 'Washita':

As in this label:

If it were a No.1 Washita the 'A' would not have extended past the end of the logo above:

Fun eh!

 

[captaincaed]

Dude, no way! You are a Frickin Machine with the knowledge game.
It's pretty dished and gouged, and I took that as a good sign of being softer. We shall see.

 

[Logan09]

Not having much luck getting this 100% cleaned. 3 soaks and this is the outcome of the Rosy Red Washita.

 

[cotedupy]

Dude, no way! You are a Frickin Machine with the knowledge game.
It's pretty dished and gouged, and I took that as a good sign of being softer. We shall see.

Haha. It was quite cool the way it had just enough of a sliver of lettering left to be able to ID it if you knew what to look for. Like it had been specially designed to show off my Washita geekiness!

Certainly sounds like it could be at the softer end, especially if it's got gouges in it - that takes some doing on them.

 

[cotedupy]

Not having much luck getting this 100% cleaned. 3 soaks and this is the outcome of the Rosy Red Washita. View attachment 176652View attachment 176653View attachment 176654View attachment 176655View attachment 176656View attachment 176657

This is very interesting...

RRs are so rare that I've only seen pics of a handful of them before, and they've been a fairly uniform rusty colour. But a lot of the old Pike literature describes them as having having that colour in stripes or patches, like your one does. It's beautiful.

And yeah - often the oil on older stones can take months of repeated soaking to come out properly, if you can be bothered. Though if I had a RR then I definitely would, as it'd be very cool to see it exactly how it would have been originally... so keep going!

(Though of course you know where I am if you lose patience ).

 

[cotedupy]

No worries. I haven't been moving around much the last month. I'll get it to you soon.

Nay worries man, just don't forget yeah! Hope the recovery is going alright.

 

[cotedupy]

Here's an observation regarding colour in old Washitas...

The stones that Mr. S kindly sent on to me recently, the two that I was (and am) most excited about were the two India x Washita combis. The 7 x 2 bench size was broken, so I got reasonably cheaply knowing I could probably fix to make it unnoticeable in use. Which I have, though the stone itself isn't going to win any beauty awards, and could still do with a bit more degreasing.

And the little 3 x 1 3/8 Sportsman stone. Which is pretty pristine, and has rather a smart Norton branded leather pochette.

And both of these stones have some pink colour in them, in a way that I've never seen before on a P-N Washita. This may just be completely coincidental; the stones don't seem any faster or coarser than my others, and the pink bits no different to the rest of the stone. My suspicion is that they were using rock with some visual inconsistencies for these combis, that they didn't want in the normal benchstones, and perhaps using up pieces of rock that weren't big or thick enough for the normal sizes. I reckon these are basically offcuts.

What does your new WIB7 combi look like @captaincaed? Any colours?

 

[captaincaed]

Here are the two newcomers. The Lily White (feels good to type that) is getting a light simple green bath.

The combo does indeed have some magenta flecking (white also). This one is not unused, but lightly used, not dished. The surface of the India is clearly a bit burnished, but not bad. And it's had oil added for certain.

 

[Desert Rat]

Not having much luck getting this 100% cleaned. 3 soaks and this is the outcome of the Rosy Red Washita. View attachment 176652View attachment 176653View attachment 176654View attachment 176655View attachment 176656View attachment 176657

A plastic container with an airtight lid works pretty good for long soaks.

 

[Desert Rat]

I get asked about Washitas a little bit (quel surprise!), especially when I'm letting any of the collection go on BST, and one aspect I always try to explain or point out is how they differ in use from synthetic waterstones that people might be more familiar with.

So today I made a little intro video, which hopefully explains a little about them for anyone unfamiliar, and shows how you can take a knife from badly blunted and beaten up, to clean drop-cutting kitchen towel in under 2 mins. I'm pretty rubbish at talking on camera, but I think it covers the basics.



View attachment 176567

Don't know what you are talking about with the rubbish talking thing. You enunciate quite clearly even with the funny accent.
An old guy like me with less than perfect hearing can clearly understand you.

There isn't much of that type of content on youtube. Are you going to do more vids with the Washita's?

 

[Desert Rat]

Here's an observation regarding colour in old Washitas...

The stones that Mr. S kindly sent on to me recently, the two that I was (and am) most excited about were the two India x Washita combis. The 7 x 2 bench size was broken, so I got reasonably cheaply knowing I could probably fix to make it unnoticeable in use. Which I have, though the stone itself isn't going to win any beauty awards, and could still do with a bit more degreasing.

View attachment 176679


And the little 3 x 1 3/8 Sportsman stone. Which is pretty pristine, and has rather a smart Norton branded leather pochette.

View attachment 176678


And both of these stones have some pink colour in them, in a way that I've never seen before on a P-N Washita. This may just be completely coincidental; the stones don't seem any faster or coarser than my others, and the pink bits no different to the rest of the stone. My suspicion is that they were using rock with some visual inconsistencies for these combis, that they didn't want in the normal benchstones, and perhaps using up pieces of rock that weren't big or thick enough for the normal sizes. I reckon these are basically offcuts.

What does your new WIB7 combi look like @captaincaed? Any colours?

View attachment 176680

View attachment 176681

India to a Washita is such a natural progression. Like the India was made for just that in mind.
I have never came across one of those combo's in the wild.

 

[Logan09]

A plastic container with an airtight lid works pretty good for long soaks.

Using a Rubbermaid container with sodium hydroxide. Strips all my other stones with ease, but this is another story.

 

[cotedupy]

Here are the two newcomers. The Lily White (feels good to type that) is getting a light simple green bath.

The combo does indeed have some magenta flecking (white also).

Ah yeah - your combi stone does have exactly the same magenta bits as my one, interesting. Maybe I'll get out the USB scope later and have a little look at it properly.

That LW looks lovely! I've had Washitas with considerably worse dishing than that, though they were probably quite old ones, lots of life left in yours . It's also a big un, is that 8" or 9"? The latter are pretty rare tbh, though they did make some - a 9" stone I picked up recently also came with the remnants of an old Norton side label on it from the same era.

I didn't spot it inside the old box until a few weeks later, and unlike yours there wasn't quite enough of it to see whether it was LW or No.1, but I already had the stone down in my mind as a LW because of the consistency, so I'll stick with that. And actually... the 9 and 10 inch stones don't appear in any old catalogues afaics, though they were clearly cut for certain customers. And I think I've only ever seen them as LWs, perhaps they didn't offer the No.1 in those XL sizes at all (?). Might ask about this over on B&B...

Don't know what you are talking about with the rubbish talking thing. You enunciate quite clearly even with the funny accent.
An old guy like me with less than perfect hearing can clearly understand you.

There isn't much of that type of content on youtube. Are you going to do more vids with the Washita's?

Ah cheers - I was actually a bit worried that I mumbled in a bit in that vid, so that's good to hear. As long as I don't sound too much like Boris Johnson I'll be happy . I could do another vid or two I suppose, maybe looking at a few different ones more closely, talking about SGs and Calicos &c. Though it might just end up repeating a lot of stuff from the rather good video you sent me a while back. Any other ideas...?

I'm sure one of us has linked to this before somewhere on this thread, but always worth doing so again for anyone who hasn't seen:

India to a Washita is such a natural progression. Like the India was made for just that in mind.
I have never came across one of those combo's in the wild.

Yeah agreed. As soon as I learnt of the existence of these combis I knew it was basically going to be my perfect whetstone, and that I had to have one!

 

[captaincaed]

Two labeled Washitas, all cleaned up, dead flat.

The cleaning process was interesting. The first stone I got was left splotchy after a long simple green soak and flattening. Wondering if the stone is heterogeneous, if the first owner used it more heavily, with different oil, or what. The newer stone that @cotedupy IDed as a lily white has a more even distribution of leopard spots. It was definitely used heavily, due to the dishing and gouging at the edges.

The first Pike is noticeably harder, and took about twice as long to lap. The sharpening leaves little tactile feedback, and even when sharpening a Forgecraft, you need to lean into it to make much progress. But, I think it’ll burnish and hone to a finer edge.

Visually, the harder Pike stone is just totally opaque, no hint of translucence. The softer Norton has a hint of depth/translucence, and a sort of butterscotch color lurking under the surface. Not a ton, but it’s there.

The second Norton lapped flat pretty quickly, in about 30” with SiC powder. It feels grippier on the fingertips after lapping.

The sharpening feedback is similar as well. With both lapped coarse, the harder Pike causes the knife to “skate” across the bumps a bit, where the softer Norton is a bit grippier, gives a mores stable feeling.

Surprising, when I stacked them up to some unknown stones … I like the unlabelled stones better.

The third bench stone was an ebay find, and has definite translucent qualities, and some fissures on one end that are really pronounced viewed head-on. The chipped corner shows a layered, fracturing structure instead of a more granitic, crumbly structure like the hardest Pike stone. The Norton isn’t really chipped enough to tell, but it seems in between. The unlabelled Washita is lapped smoother than the first two, and has a nice, even feedback.

The travel stone I inherited from my grandpa also has a translucent quality and sort of a flakey texture rather than bumpy, when lapped coarse. It has a strong butterscotch color that I think is just part of the stone, not an artifact of oil (no change in color during lapping). Excellent tactile feedback.

Last but not least is the combo stone. The surface is lapped smoothest of all, but also provides a really nice, smooth, tactile feedback. It probably has the most pronounced translucence of all the stones. Leaves a clean, bitey edge, but not the first choice for hogging material off (that’s what the India side is for!)

I’m still not sure how/if all these correlate with sharpening, but in general it seems like the features that make me like the stone best are some translucence and a flakey substructure.

If I had my way about it, I would chip the corner off any stone I wanted to buy, and see if it crumbled like cement or knapped more like arrowhead novaculite, favoring the latter.

Just my rambling thoughts after a long week of work.

 

[cotedupy]

Two labeled Washitas, all cleaned up, dead flat.

The cleaning process was interesting. The first stone I got was left splotchy after a long simple green soak and flattening. Wondering if the stone is heterogeneous, if the first owner used it more heavily, with different oil, or what. The newer stone that @cotedupy IDed as a lily white has a more even distribution of leopard spots. It was definitely used heavily, due to the dishing and gouging at the edges.

The first Pike is noticeably harder, and took about twice as long to lap. The sharpening leaves little tactile feedback, and even when sharpening a Forgecraft, you need to lean into it to make much progress. But, I think it’ll burnish and hone to a finer edge.

Visually, the harder Pike stone is just totally opaque, no hint of translucence. The softer Norton has a hint of depth/translucence, and a sort of butterscotch color lurking under the surface. Not a ton, but it’s there.

The second Norton lapped flat pretty quickly, in about 30” with SiC powder. It feels grippier on the fingertips after lapping.

The sharpening feedback is similar as well. With both lapped coarse, the harder Pike causes the knife to “skate” across the bumps a bit, where the softer Norton is a bit grippier, gives a mores stable feeling.

Surprising, when I stacked them up to some unknown stones … I like the unlabelled stones better.

The third bench stone was an ebay find, and has definite translucent qualities, and some fissures on one end that are really pronounced viewed head-on. The chipped corner shows a layered, fracturing structure instead of a more granitic, crumbly structure like the hardest Pike stone. The Norton isn’t really chipped enough to tell, but it seems in between. The unlabelled Washita is lapped smoother than the first two, and has a nice, even feedback.

View attachment 177268

The travel stone I inherited from my grandpa also has a translucent quality and sort of a flakey texture rather than bumpy, when lapped coarse. It has a strong butterscotch color that I think is just part of the stone, not an artifact of oil (no change in color during lapping). Excellent tactile feedback.

Last but not least is the combo stone. The surface is lapped smoothest of all, but also provides a really nice, smooth, tactile feedback. It probably has the most pronounced translucence of all the stones. Leaves a clean, bitey edge, but not the first choice for hogging material off (that’s what the India side is for!)

I’m still not sure how/if all these correlate with sharpening, but in general it seems like the features that make me like the stone best are some translucence and a flakey substructure.

If I had my way about it, I would chip the corner off any stone I wanted to buy, and see if it crumbled like cement or knapped more like arrowhead novaculite, favoring the latter.

Just my rambling thoughts after a long week of work.

View attachment 177261View attachment 177262View attachment 177263View attachment 177264View attachment 177265View attachment 177266
View attachment 177267

Excellent stuff! This is precisely the kind of content we're here for.

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The Pike one with the dark splotch in the middle is interesting eh. I've not seen that kind of thing after full degreasing. It may be an extreme example of the type of stone Griswold calls 'black mottled Ouachitas', though given it's a labelled Pike stone I'd probably guess not. Maybe different densities in the stone + something like wood dye has one on it? Really dunno about that one, I'm clutching at straws there! Completely totally opaque is very peculiar too.

Keep trying with the soft Norton LW. The softer, lower SG stones are what people go most crazy for. Though obviously it's really a matter of personal preference, and of the other characters in a particular stone.

Your grandfather's samller stone looks f-ing awesome. If I had to pick just one of those stones that I wanted to try / thought would be particularly excellent - it'd be that one. Dunno why, just speaks to me!

FWIW - the best Washitas I've had are also unlabelled, though that's not necessarily surprising. Once you can tell something is (this kind of) Washita then you're basically almost certain it's a P-N stone, and at the very least it will have come from the same quarries. And TBH I've never had one I didn't think was pretty good, it's more just small variations making me like one thing more than another for what I use for.

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I might do some comparisons later of a few stones that are are a bit different from each other...

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p.s. - Did you measure the SGs of your ones...?

 

[cotedupy]

Playing around with a few things yesterday evening:

L to R: Pike LW, Washita, Norton Washita x India, Norton Soft Ark, Norton Sportsman.

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I'm not going to bore people with microscope pictures, but take it from me that with a 600x USB scope soft arks and Washitas are pretty much indistinguishable. Here are some surface pics though.

Pike Lily White. This stone has a high SG - over 2.4, is a very fine stone, and not necessarily my favourite for knives. I have degreased this stone at considerable length, and it basically just stays like this:

Washita. This is my absolute favourite I've ever had, it's fast af and finishes fine. SG is surprisingly high at a little over 2.3, though that may be because it still has some oil in it.

Washita x India. Only used this a bit, it seemed toward the finer end, but will be interesting to see how it stacks up against the others.

Sportsman and Soft Ark. Now this is the main reason I wanted to try some things out, I think you can guess why. I have never seen the Sportsman described as an India x Soft - in the old catalogues it's a India x Washita. And yet...

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Surfaces were all roughed on a very worn atoma 400.

The Pike LW is faster than I remember when the surface is rough like this, in fact it's very quick. I imagine the hardness of this stone will lead it to burnish more quickly than others, which is why I had it in mind as a fine and slow stone. With a fresh surface it's fine and fast.

My favourite Washita is still amazing. Leibniz was correct: the universe in which such a stone exists must surely be the best of all possible worlds.

The Washita x India is indeed a finer slower stone. It's still pretty quick being a Washita, but it's not a complete standout.

The Soft Ark is clearly not as good as the Washitas. It's a fair bit slower with pressure, and doesn't seem to finish any finer. The SG of this stone is over 2.5.

The Sportsman... is like the Soft Ark, almost identical tbh. These aren't bad stones, but if we're drawing distinctions then I like the soft, friable lower SG softs (or 'Modern Washitas') more.

Sportsman stones nowadays are Coarse and Fine India combis, the old ones were Coarse India x Washita. But perhaps at some point after Norton stopped quarrying Wahsita stones there was a transition period where the Sportman was a Coarse India x Soft Arkansas? Cos that's what I'd call this. @stringer also has an old Sportsman stone, and to my eye his one looks a lot more Washita-y than mine does.

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And lastly, here's a closeup pic, under light, of the second stone. We talk a bit about porosity in Washitas, but it can be a little difficult to see until you start using them. This stone has a very extensive and large pore structure even for a Washita. And it makes it feckin awesome!

 

[blokey]

My pocket stones just got here, do you guys use them with oil or water?

 

[HumbleHomeCook]

My pocket stones just got here, do you guys use them with oil or water?View attachment 177646

I use mine with honing oil.

I personally think you can use them with water here and there but I prefer getting an oil base down first.

 

[captaincaed]

Windex is a good compromise if you're not sure

 

[captaincaed]

All the newer stones south of hard black are porous enough to retain oil, so if you're undecided, a surfactant mixed with water will give you some ability to suspend swarf without dedicating you to oil.

I hear spit is the tits also.

 

[blokey]

Thanks guys, I used some of my mineral oils for now, very fun little thing, couple strokes bring my knife back to paper towel slicing sharp.

 

[cotedupy]

Neither my Kippington, nor Maz Petty really needs a 9” Lily White to put a killer edge on. But I’d spent a bit of time tarting them up so why the f not eh? Yolo.

Hell it even got my old fat-behind-the-edge Sab push cutting kitchen towel after.

And an obligatory pore shot; notably smaller, but perhaps more, here than in the previous stone above.

 

[deltaplex]

I'm excited to get this Marketplace find cleaned up...

 

[deltaplex]

Oh! If anyone has tips on how to safely extract this (apparently glued in) stone from the base with both mostly intact, I'd love to hear it.

 

[stringer]

Oh! If anyone has tips on how to safely extract this (apparently glued in) stone from the base with both mostly intact, I'd love to hear it.

It's probably just pressure fit. At least I haven't seen many that were glued out of the many mystery oil stones I've purchased. But unfortunately I don't have any good advice if it is glued or a really good pressure fit either way. I've tried several things and some didn't work and some damaged the box or the stone or worst case both. So now I don't risk a stone to save a box if it is at all giving me trouble. I take a sharp thin chisel and try to split the wood on grain near one corner with one stiff mallet blow. Usually the box breaks in a way that I can repair it after I've cleaned the stone. And if it doesn't then I throw the box in the scrap pile. If it really is glued then you have might still have to boil it to get the stone and box fully separated.