Welsh sharpening stone “Dragon’s Tongue”

[GorillaGrunt]

Got one from the ebay seller with all caps who says “people ask me if these are vintage, well they are 500 million years old.”

I had done a bit of reading on these, there’s this thread on here too

https://www.kitchenknifeforums.com/threads/dragons-tongue-purple-llyn-melynllyn-green-slate.28363/
and went with the less fine one. It self-slurries more easily than a few of the other non-Japanese razor stones I’ve gotten, but not as easily as the Thuringian. This one looks like it can achieve something closer to a kasumi blend without scratches than the others and the edge is really nice. Polish seems to be close to a finishing jnat too.

I think I’m getting with stones almost where I got with knives — I’ve got a bunch of good ones and it’s not necessarily likely that the next one will be substantially better than the stuff I have.

 

[TB_London]

I found them to be incredibly slow for wide bevel finishing, and found the edge they left didn’t have the bite I was looking for in the kitchen.

Fun to use for a bit but soon superseded

 

[cotedupy]

Would love to see some pics of them / results! I have never used any Welsh slates, and I'd be very interested to hear thoughts regarding self-slurry vs plate slurry. I find the latter works for me better both in terms of cutting steel, and the edge they leave.

But obviously different slates, different... err... rates

 

[GorillaGrunt]

Something else I thought of, these worldwide natural stones I’ve been trying out generally on iron clad carbon. Stainless or higher alloyed steels might be less compatible depending on the matrix and abrasive minerals of the stones.

For slurry my options are self, same-stone slurry stone included, Japanese nagura, diamond plate. The plate on my unknown ebay jnat gave the best resul, haven’t tested them all on the Welsh yet.

wet slurry photo is with the included slurry stone

 

[GorillaGrunt]

I just finished dicing a case of peppers, case of onions, case of carrots with Hinoura AS finished on this and it did just fine. @tblondon did you have the one sold as 8k or one of the finer ones? At first i wanted the yellow lake one but i read that the finer ones are too fine for knives as you describe.

 

[cotedupy]

It does look as though it slurries quite well with the included stone. I sometimes do that with my own slates, but do find a plate a lot quicker. I'll include another small piece with yours, so you can try both though.

I don't have any stainless knives, so haven't tried on mine, but feedback from another member was that they were better on carbon than stainless.

Will be very interesting to hear your thoughts on a side by side comparison!