This guy followed one growth ring to expose the “young” tree inside the mature
tree


https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/06/26/very-clever-removes-the-
growth-rings-to-reveal-the-original-
sapling/">https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/06/26/very-clever-removes-the-
growth-rings-to-reveal-the-original-sapling/


Pretty interesting - never tried to visualize the branches sticking out being
absorbed liked that as the tree got bigger

Ed Minch

Ed —— thanks for sharing. 

I recon there’s more sculpting going on one since the second half of the 20th
century than ever before, and generally the artists aren’t doing still life, at
best they’re making statements with abstractions. Sometimes it’s just showing
off welding skills.

When I saw the first picture, my lizard brain said “aaaaaaieeee what could be
made from that wood!” Then I saw the second picture, and I was embarrassed for
my lizard brain.

Penone is a genius. And judging by the shavings pile, also apparently a man of
great patience even by Galoot standards.

Ray,

The only book I know of about identifying sharpening stones is this one:

http://taths.org.uk/shop/69-hone

There are lots of nice pictures of different kinds of stones in that book. Wish
I could find my copy....

If you want to know how to identify Arkansas stones by grade, you can look in
the archives:

https://swingleydev.com/ot/get/213402/single/

or you can look at Dan's Whetsones guide here:

https://www.danswhetstone.com/information/stone-grades-101/

--
Chuck Taylor
north of Seattle

Chuck,
Just what I have been searching for, thanks.

Ordered!

-----Original Message----- 
From: Chuck Taylor
Sent: Sunday, February 12, 2017 9:53 PM
To: Ray Sheley Jr.
Cc: oldtools@s...
Subject: Re: [OldTools] Identifying sharpening stones

Ray,

The only book I know of about identifying sharpening stones is this one:

http://taths.org.uk/shop/69-hone

There are lots of nice pictures of different kinds of stones in that book. 
Wish I could find my copy....

If you want to know how to identify Arkansas stones by grade, you can look 
in the archives:

https://swingleydev.com/ot/get/213402/single/

or you can look at Dan's Whetsones guide here:

https://www.danswhetstone.com/information/stone-grades-101/

--
Chuck Taylor
north of Seattle

Our own Todd Hughes has had maybe 6-7 of the Coticules on his ebay site in the
last few weeks.  He recently picked up a big box of stones at an auction and has
a few up now - the Coticules have gone for up to $200

Reminds me - the harder I look, the luckier I get


Ed Minch

Well Chuck,

First you cost me money. (The book)

Then you get me on a tear about my mystery black stone which I haven't yet 
used due to it's present state/condition.

It's obviously an old stone, not perfectly square in any direction, dings, 
scratches, corner/edge chips.
It has about a 1/8" dish on one side of the stone.
It even has some brown "splatter" on the non-dished side.
It's not been abused, nor has it been treated  lightly, it has scars.
But it's black, and it's heavy.

With a little work  I do not doubt that this could be made into a 
serviceable stone.
Up until now because of it's unknown lineage, and the fact that I have other 
stones to use it has been just sitting there waiting.

But now you made me curious enough to spend some time with it.
I do not have the equipment to cobble up a way to duplicate the procedure 
that I see on-line to do the measurement.

So I made a rough estimate the good old boy way.
I have a vernier caliper and averaged out the height, width and length 
dimension, as noted this stone is NOT square and dimensions taper .030-.040" 
everywhere.
But except for the dish all planes are reasonably straight surfaces so 
average dimensions should suffice.
I end up with about 22.713 in³ of stone which weighed 2.17# on a kitchen 
scale.

My napkin calculation puts this at a specific gravity between 2.6 and 2.7, 
and it does NOT compensate for the dish which would push it towards the 
higher side.

I'm fairly confident that this has been identified as being a BLACK HARD 
ARKANSAS, and worth some effort to make it serviceable, thanks.

-----Original Message----- 
From: Chuck Taylor
Sent: Sunday, February 12, 2017 9:53 PM
Ray,

The only book I know of about identifying sharpening stones is this one:

http://taths.org.uk/shop/69-hone

If you want to know how to identify Arkansas stones by grade, you can look 
in the archives:

https://swingleydev.com/ot/get/213402/single/

Chuck Taylor
north of Seattle

On Mon, Feb 13, 2017 at 8:27 AM, Ray Sheley Jr. 
wrote:

> have a vernier caliper and averaged out the height, width and length
> dimension, as noted this stone is NOT square and dimensions taper
> .030-.040" everywhere.
> But except for the dish all planes are reasonably straight surfaces so
> average dimensions should suffice.
> I end up with about 22.713 in³ of stone which weighed 2.17# on a kitchen
> scale.
>
> My napkin calculation puts this at a specific gravity between 2.6 and 2.7,
> and it does NOT compensate for the dish which would push it towards the
> higher side.
>
> I'm fairly confident that this has been identified as being a BLACK HARD
> ARKANSAS, and worth some effort to make it serviceable, thanks.
>

Well done good sir.  May use that to work out a few of my questionable one.


-- 
Kirk Eppler

Hey, I'll trade you a #4 size millers falls plane for a similar size norris....

-------- Original message --------
From: paul womack
 
Date:02/13/2017  2:27 AM
(GMT-07:00) 
To: John Ruth ,"Ray Sheley Jr."
 
Cc: oldtools@s... 
Subject: Re: [OldTools]
Identifying sharpening stones 

John Ruth wrote:

>
> In a lifetime of buying just about every likely-looking whetstone that I
encounter at flea markets and yard sales, I have yet to acquire even one
coticule.
>

Ah, the big ol' Atlantic; just like our common language,
how it does divide us.

I try to suppress my envy at residents of the big ol' U S of A,
and their endless supplies of pre 1900 Stanleys, Disston saws,
beautiful and ingenious Millers Falls (both drills and planes),
and £1 Arkansas stones.

So please, guys, don't begrudge us poor UK'ians
the odd Norris, Preston or Coticule :-)

  BugBear
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OldTools@s...

Bugbear wrote: "I try to suppress my envy at residents of the big ol' U S of A,
and their endless supplies of pre 1900 Stanleys, Disston saws,
beautiful and ingenious Millers Falls (both drills and planes),
and ?1 Arkansas stones. So please, guys, don't begrudge us poor UK'ians
the odd Norris, Preston or Coticule :-)"

I know, I know, look to the blessings you have and shun envy. Even so, I do
begrudge the odd Norris. To me the UK is a place where you can find infill
planes (and, by the way, illuminated manuscripts, which are sometimes used to
replaced car gaskets) in every garbage tip and estate sale. You use the damaged
ones for paperweights and doorstops. Fifteenth-century cupboards are used to
store cleaning products the kitchens of your houses, and Sheraton tables are
covered with the equivalents of banana jello and three-bean casserole at the
equivalent of the church bake sale. I even know how to work pounds, shillings,
and pence, so I am prepared to be able to buy if I ever get over there.

OK, maybe my notion of the United Kingdom has a touch of fantasy in it.
Even so, a friend of a friend of mine, a knife collector, went on a visit to
England back in the late '60s and decided on a whim to leave the posted tourist
right-of-ways and visit Sheffield, like a visitor to Africa heading off the game
reserve roads into lion country. In the old George Wolstenholm factory, in the
assembly room, he saw hundreds of century-old knives still lying on the
workbenches, completed but never packed for sale. He asked the one old workman
still rattling around the place, a wrinkled-visaged white-haired fellow who
stooped like a Disney toymaker, how much he wanted for a Sheffield Bowie picked
up at random, a knife worth more than a Stanley #1 plane (another a friend of
mine got a #1 for free, but that's another story). "Coupla bob?" asked the noble
fellow in response. So my friend's friend took his Bowie home, pawned it for
more than his car was worth, borrowed on the rest of his knife collection, sold
his car, mortgaged his house, and tried to raise money on his wife, and went
back to Sheffield with $50,000 and bought up every knife he could find in the
old factories. And that, my chickies, is the story of the foundation of Atlanta
Cutlery, as told to me by my friend Hank Reinhardt back when the world was young
and-all.

Tom Conroy

The medieval manuscript used for a car gasket, not an illuminated one I expect,
happened in the late '40s when a young rare book dealer at the start of his
distinguished career was driving home from a country auction. Seventy miles
short of London a gasket blew out, and he used the only available material to do
a running repair. He dined out on it for the rest of his life; I heard the story
from a friend of his at an after-dinner speech at a book collectors club, not
many years ago. Not all manuscripts are valuable, and not all antiquarians have
the proper respect for low-priced ones. Hey, I have a framed page from a musical
manuscript, picked out of someone's trash on my way to work; having it disgusts
me, but it was better to take it home than to let it go to the dump. The friend
who got a free #1 Stanley is Kirk Eppler, who paid a fair price for a crammed-
full toolbox to someone whose address he didn't take, and who found the plane at
the bottom of the chest when he got home. I've lacquered up the story of Atlanta
Cutlery a bit, but the essentials are what Hank told me during one of my visits
to him in the 1970s (look him up in Wikipedia, he was as fine a man as I have
ever known, and pushed me into the best and most important decision of my life,
to go to college after dropping out of high school).