david weaver
Actually, what I'm implying is that the source can have a mistake in it even if it is a good source. It doesn't make it "not" a good source.

In terms of washitas, they are actually superior to a soft arkansas rather than it just being a matter of opinion. They have a larger range, cut faster when you want them to and can work finer. In old catalogs, they commanded twice as much money despite probably being cheaper to process (or no more expensive) and coming out of the ground in giant chunks (up to 2500 pounds) of clear stone.

I think the writer may not have been familiar with them. They get dismissed in modern woodworking because people tend to focus on the finest cutting stones and forget others exist - at least in the US (a good suita in japan is still really expensive, even in country where stuff is not as expensive as it's made out to be over here).

I can't recall if it was Hasluck or Holtzapffel. Either is still an excellent source - just caused a jolt when I read it, as soft arkansas stones were widely sold in catalogs as a low cost alternative to washitas.

There is only one mine source for washitas, too, which might have something to do with why the market wasn't flooded with them. It's still full of stone that you don't have to work that hard to get, but Norton suggested it's not in their financial interest to open and close the mine to produce stone to be processed in the north east (I suppose they process their arkansas stones there).

I'm leaning toward Hasluck as I'm writing this, because I believe Holtzapffel refers to washitas as crushing the market in the UK for the UK-based natural stones in one of his edition updates.

(as I sit here today, I shaved off of a razor that I used nothing but a washita to reset and hone after it hadn't been shaved with for a few decades - at least. I have a gaggle of them - perhaps 8 or 9 right now, but I don't have trouble locating them or selling them with little effort, so that number tends to go up and down. There is something about their structure - a matrix of pores rather than an agglomeration of particles - that makes them hone a razor better than their coarseness would suggest, but that's not really a discussion for this board, so I'll stop there).

I don't have nicholson's texts, but I do have Haslucks and Holtzapffel's and don't plan on unloading either of them any time soon.