what stone do I have?

I received this stone from my Grandfather, on the back it reads:

Lavoy
T. Noonan & Co

Attachment 301608Attachment 301609Attachment 301610
First pic is the back, second close up of engraved label, and last is the top.
This stone is very fine but I haven't really put it through the paces as I wanted to determine what it is before putting oil or water on it.
According to what I could find T. Noonan was a barber in Boston during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. My gut and all logic says the stone is a finisher for straight razors.
Admittedly I have little experience with stones other than very course cheap ones and the cheap DMT diamond plates. I've been using granite and abrasive film so I can't compare this stone to anything.
David Weaver, I'm hoping you can help me!

And I forgot to add: Steve Voigt, we have a sharpening party ahead!

Yeah, it's a straight razor hone. I don't know anything about the noonan name, the swaty and pike branded hones of that style are probably the most well known. Razor hones are usually 2x5 or 2x6 and somewhere around half inch thick or maybe a little less (two sided more).

Most of them, i believe, are aluminum oxide, but not necessarily that fine of particles - especially if you lap them (don't lap it). The idea with most of those razor hones is to use them on a razor without actually honing the edge off. The're "thinning the bevel" on a razor, but leaving the edge. They come with instructions that basically say four or five light strokes dry (some say lather is OK) and no more, because you don't want to remove the edge on a razor with a stone that doesn't have really fine particles.

So, water or lather. Never oil unless instructions say you can do it.

(particle size varies a LOT from brand to brand and even some hones within specific brands. the al-ox hones are usually brown or dark red, some of the other alundum hones are light gray or bluish, and the silicon carbide stones - most of them carborundum brand - are dark gray, light gray or black).

Does lather mean I could clean it with soap and water? I ran a pocket knife over it (cheap Gerber) and it seemed to really improve the edge, and quickly!

Yes, soap and water is fine, and that's how I'd clean it. Plastic bristle brush if you want.

not particularly small particles really means that some of these are like a 4000 grit stone, but some of them do seem to have fairly small particles. the surface treatment on them to really have a burnished surface is what makes them nice to use on a pocket knife or razor, though.

Thanks for the discussion David!

I've seen noonan razors before, and didn't know what the origin was. I checked the razor board, and it looks like T noonan and sons was a barber supply company in Boston. It doesn't really make any difference who made the hone, but one of the major manufacturers of barbers hones would've made that hone for them as a house brand hone if they were barber supply. I guess it's no different now, there's a list of branded items and then house brand.

The things that make barber hones toxic to use on razors when they're kept in perfect shape (chipped edges, etc) make no difference to us. The razor community is *much* more sensitive about everything being undamaged, and on the appearance side, much more willing to pay for appearance.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jeff Bartley

Thanks for the discussion David!

---

Sure, always like to see different stones! There are so many house brand and other razor stones around that sometimes you can get what looks like a very nicely presented stone and then find that you can't even locate another one similar anywhere.

It's no surprise that my Grandfather lived in Boston his entire life. I cleaned it up over lunch and sharpened our main chefs' knife (a messermeister, nothing fancy)......but man, it put a great edge on that as well. I'll need to warn my wife before she uses it!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jeff Bartley

And I forgot to add: Steve Voigt, we have a sharpening party ahead!

---

Any time, dude!

I missed that this was your grandfather's stone. That's even cooler. My grandfather shaved with a gillette and one of the old spice boar brushes that could barely make a lather...nothing that cool.

These types of stones should put to rest the idea that synthetic stones are a recent thing. They were made way back then with various types of alumina and silicon carbide, and there were other types that had natural mineral abrasives (like the frictionites).

There were bigger longer versions of these "swaty" type hones like yours that were big enough to be bench stones, but they never caught on. Lots of carborundum hones for various purposes, with the razor hones being the finer and smaller versions of theirs, and they were fairly high priced and sold like crazy, but a lot of them seem to have had little use. I can imagine that a lot of barbers and cutlers using coticules or other such gentle stones used a fresh new silicon carbide stone and didn't exactly see the results as satisfying.

A carborundum hone could've been had for $2 at the same time that an escher branded thuringian hone could've been had for $2. The carborundums are sometimes hard to sell at any price now, and such an escher hone unused or lightly used is worth $500-$750.

I actually have two of these, the pics above are the smaller of the two, the larger is the same material but unmarked. My thought is to leave the smaller one in the kitchen and take the larger to the shop.
Which raises another question: neither is completely flat, pretty close but not good enough for chisel or plane irons. How much damage would I do if I tried to flatten one of these?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jeff Bartley

I actually have two of these, the pics above are the smaller of the two, the larger is the same material but unmarked. My thought is to leave the smaller one in the kitchen and take the larger to the shop.
Which raises another question: neither is completely flat, pretty close but not good enough for chisel or plane irons. How much damage would I do if I tried to flatten one of these?

---

Unknown - some of them rely on the way the surface is prepared to cut finely, and others are the same all the way through. If you get one that is hard only on the surface and through use, and you lap it, you can pretty much write it off unless you want to try doing something like shellacking the surface to try to get it to hold together.

I would use it like it is and not worry about how uneven it is. It's not necessary for a stone that fine to be perfectly flat - if you use one in the ship, just work your chisel or plane iron over the edges of the stone.

It's hard to fathom paying $500-750 for a stone!! I'll give it a go in the shop, wonder if it'll touch a pmv11 blade?

It should work PM V11 without a problem. It has a modern very hard abrasive of some type in it.

$750 is for a stone that is very specific to razors (obviously). The area in germany that produced them ran out of material around 1930 or so, and the stones they marketed under the label were ultra uniform (so you could count on them being the same from one to another) and easy to use to get a comfortable edge on a razor - you rub the razor on the stone, you get a sharp razor without jags. The fact that they literally ran out of material, and then someone tried caking stones together from the dust from the cuttings (which made something less desirable) probably has a lot to do with their desirability. Razor people are funny, just like australian axe people are funny (they pay more than razor people for certain stones).

(They were a hundred bucks or so until 5 or 6 years ago, though, which seems more appropriate to me - but I'm not buying any stones at $750)