Some may have seen Danny's whetstone prospecting thread here
What could be nicer than a walk in countryside like this
to collect natural whetstones from a famous historic whetstone site and turn them into lovely looking stones like these.
I loved the idea of using natural stones like these but wanted to try a larger piece alongside the range of benchstones I know. Dan cut me the biggest piece he had and I put it to the test alongside a range of stones from King, Spiderco, Shapton as well as some natural Japanese stones.
They performed surprisingly well, I used my trusty frosts 106, I know exactly how this knife feels on stones of different grits. I cut alternately diagonally then straight with different stones and looked at the resulting grooved surface with 30x magnification to compare the results.
The first thing to note was the stones gave a lot of feel, that is they grip the knife nicely as you cut, sometimes hard fine stones can give little feedback and the knife skates on them like on glass. Second they removed metal reasonably quickly, another failing of many hard fine stones. Third they produced a good compromise polished working edge, not as fine as I normally go for woodcarving knives but a good edge very comparable to the king brand 6000. In fact the finish under magnification of the King 6000, the Shapton 5000 and the Moughton Scar stone was almost identical. A knife finished straight from this stone would be good for general use though I went on to my 12000 Japanese natural stone and finished on the Shapton 16000. A very similar effect can be had by finishing with autosol metal polish smeared on a piece of MDF.
I can see why these stones were popular in their day. They are beautiful and work as well as the king brand 6000 grit stone. For a little stone to touch up a knife in the field I think they would take a lot of beating. Think of them as a beautiful natural British DC4.
Thanks Dan for all the work, walking, cutting packing and posting, it is a joy to have a stone with that sort of provenance.
PS first posted at the end of the long thread but got lost a bit. If you can talk Danny into another trip for another batch of these I would recommend it.
What could be nicer than a walk in countryside like this
to collect natural whetstones from a famous historic whetstone site and turn them into lovely looking stones like these.
I loved the idea of using natural stones like these but wanted to try a larger piece alongside the range of benchstones I know. Dan cut me the biggest piece he had and I put it to the test alongside a range of stones from King, Spiderco, Shapton as well as some natural Japanese stones.
They performed surprisingly well, I used my trusty frosts 106, I know exactly how this knife feels on stones of different grits. I cut alternately diagonally then straight with different stones and looked at the resulting grooved surface with 30x magnification to compare the results.
The first thing to note was the stones gave a lot of feel, that is they grip the knife nicely as you cut, sometimes hard fine stones can give little feedback and the knife skates on them like on glass. Second they removed metal reasonably quickly, another failing of many hard fine stones. Third they produced a good compromise polished working edge, not as fine as I normally go for woodcarving knives but a good edge very comparable to the king brand 6000. In fact the finish under magnification of the King 6000, the Shapton 5000 and the Moughton Scar stone was almost identical. A knife finished straight from this stone would be good for general use though I went on to my 12000 Japanese natural stone and finished on the Shapton 16000. A very similar effect can be had by finishing with autosol metal polish smeared on a piece of MDF.
I can see why these stones were popular in their day. They are beautiful and work as well as the king brand 6000 grit stone. For a little stone to touch up a knife in the field I think they would take a lot of beating. Think of them as a beautiful natural British DC4.
Thanks Dan for all the work, walking, cutting packing and posting, it is a joy to have a stone with that sort of provenance.
PS first posted at the end of the long thread but got lost a bit. If you can talk Danny into another trip for another batch of these I would recommend it.
