Does anybody recognise this stone...?
- Thread starter cotedupy
- Start date
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Deadeye
Established Member
Serpentine?
Inspector
Nyuck, Nyuck, Nyuck!
Jacob should know. He was around when they were making spears, knives and arrow heads from it. 
How does it perform? Has a nice look to it.
Pete
How does it perform? Has a nice look to it.
Pete
I live not far from serpentine country - it's not like any serpentine I've seen. That's not to say it isn't, though. Serpentine is quite soft and varies quite a bit. It looks more like a marble to me.
Jacob
New Luddism. Awake and resist!
No I'm completely stumped.Jacob should know. He was around when they were making spears, knives and arrow heads from it.
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Pete
Probably from outer space?Have you tried honing PMT V11 blades at 29.5º?
What does it taste like?
It's reasonably hard under a blade, but gets quite a thick, creamy slurry relatively easily with an atoma, which makes it feel softer in use. Perhaps 4.5 on a Japanese scale. It's fine - will finish a razor, and is a little quicker than many other comparable old stones. Not as fast as most coticules, but a bit quicker than a lot of other things. Perhaps doesn't come across in my pics but the slurry is the same bright lime green-yhellow as the stone.
It's probably in a kind of shale/slate/argillite liminal area. From memory the SG was around 2.68, which would be very low for a slate but pretty high for shale.
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Tony Zaffuto
Established Member
How much “dishing” does it have?
I think you're right - I'm pretty sure it's not serpentine, but funny you should say that about marble...
People call this the 'Fiddich River Stone', but that's a name that's been given to it in the last ten years or so, and the reasoning is fairly tenuous I think. Based on a single line in an old text which says something like: 'On the banks of the River Fiddich a kind of laminated marble is found, from which hones and whetstones are made'. And just because this stone looks quite a lot like marble - the name has stuck. I don’t think there’s any evidence it’s actually Scottish.
But it's not a marble; it doesn't effervesce with acid, and it does abrade steel, which marble doesn't because it has a Mohs hardness of 2-3 or something. TBH my suspicion (albeit no more than a hunch) is that the stone is Welsh, though it isn't quite the same it bears a strong similarity to a particular type of Welsh slate hone called the Glanrafon.
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Perhaps I should've said all that originally, but I was wondering if anyone here had come across it before and knew anything more certain than I do. Because frankly I know sod all, the above is all speculation. Not helped by there being no more than a handful of examples out there, at least on the internet.
Might have to go to Wales eh!
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Both sides are lapped flat now, though I got it from someone else who shares the same niche interest in weird old whetstones. It may have been dished when he got it.
It isn't exactly an Idwal no (I've had quite a lot of them), though it could be slightly related...
If my hunch was right - that it's from Wales - then a lot of the old types of whetstone there are found in a relatively small geographical area in northern Snowdonia. Though Idwals are a novaculite they also have quite a slate-y fissility to them, and I imagine probably came from the same or similar initial deposits as the slate hones in the same area, just with different types and levels of metamorphic change.
Tony Zaffuto
Established Member
Presenting a “new surface”? In my vintage stone accumulation, I find the best stones are those that have been used and otherwise broken in.
I really have no exotic steels, other than one PMV-11 chisel. Mostly O1 and W1, so it’s either oilstones or Spyderco ceramics. However, I do like finding a few stones, such as yours, just to try! Thanks for posting it!
Yep certainly for some types of stone, or certain kinds of edge, I find that things can be better if a little bedded in.
Though I mostly sharpen kitchen knives (largely from Hitachi paper steels), and for that quite aggressive cutting is better - you don't really want very refined edges. So if using finer stones like this I'd usually work on a newly exposed surface from an atoma slurry.
TBH - I don't actually use this often for knives, it's a better razor stone, or perhaps for a very fine chisel edge (?*). For knives I mostly use Washitas, Turkish and Coticules.
* I sharpen chisels occasionally, though I wouldn't consider myself particularly great at it, and certainly no expert on what kinds of stones are best.
it's visually interesting - similar with the "Skin" on the corner in looks to a lot of japanese stones.
I guess if you have something that you know is relatively hard, you can get a good idea of its cutting power with water only on that. As in, if it cuts about what an arkansas would cut efficiently, it's silica based. If it cuts steel a few points harder than the arkansas will and then stops (figure in plain steel, that's 62 for the ark, and 65 for a stone that's got some natural alumina in it), then things get more interesting.
I haven't seen stones from england like that, but I'm sure just as with the US, when people are slicing slate from local areas, you can end up with all kinds of things that never got internet fame. I have some slates that were just cheap local types in the US, but nothing is interesting in use. Either the stone is coarse, or it's slow, or both.
Yes, this is generally my experience with most of them, more suited to razors perhaps than proper abrasive cutting. I was rather surprised that the Fiddich River (for want of a better name) actually turned out to be quite good, and not a case of style over substance. Strictly speaking it's probably an argillite, and the geological formation means they're going to be generally a bit faster than slates.
I have another very rare, pretty, and somewhat sought after UK stone - the Moughton Whetstone. This is a siltstone and it's painfully slow.
