Car boot hone

[bugbear]

Well, the s/h season is upon us.

In a pile of very rusty tools (it turned out the bucket they had been stored in got full of water...) there was
a scrap of dark, oily, irregular stone. Now, in my rural area, these are often just tool "rubs" (used for scythes. hooks etc) heavily worn.

But, if you don't look, you won't find. So I picked it up, and it had a single flat face. So; a woodworking stone.
Woodworking stones with irregular faces are normally old (with the coming of diamond saws it became easy to
stones into rectilinear forms with little waste). The fingernail test gave more drag that I like, so it could be coarse.
However the face wasn't significantly hollow, which implies it was a hard stone. Hard stones are normally fine,
so I guess that the drag was old congealed oil, and not coarseness.

All in all I was interested. He said a quid, and we agreed on 50p, and I walked away with a stone.

A quick workshop test/clean (I rubbed my test chisel on it using water, then white spirit as lube) confirmed my suspicions.

Charnley Forest. I mean, it's fine, it's green. and it's got red inclusions. It's canonically Charnley Forest.

Well worth 50p.

(surface damp with water)

BugBear

 

[adidat]

The sellers must think us woodworkers are crazy when we sort through a heap of junk and pull out a few treasures that just look like rubbish to them. And then with wild eyes we hand over money for this piece of rubbish!

Adidat

 

[tsb]

I love having a rummage through a few buckets and boxes on a car boot. I've just come back with a moore and wright steel square, 12" one, for £3.