# The Turkish Oilstone Matter



## cotedupy (Aug 23, 2021)

[I warn now that this is going to appear somewhat prolix - you can skip to Part 3 if you just want to know about how the stones themselves work.]

Some months ago I came across a dirty old stone, in a rural salvage shop here in South Australia. When I bought it I thought it might be a kind of Arkansas stone, but after cleaning, and lapping and using, it was clearly a nice example of the legendary ‘Turkish Oilstone’, and I've since come across a second. I’ll be looking at these two stones in this thread as well as exploring some of the mystery and confusion regarding their origin. The first is on the left, the second on the right:







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Our main problem is that historical sources have the Turkish stone in a number of different places, whilst also conceding that the exact origin is unknown. Some texts tell us particularly useless things like ‘They are called Turkey stones because they come from Turkey’, while others are more detailed: The area that we might loosely call the 'Levant' is mentioned - modern day Syria/Lebanon/Jordan/Israel/Palestine. A French text has them transported to and traded from Jaffa (Tel Aviv).

Although Crete is not mentioned historically as far as I can see, it should be noted that until 1898 it was part of the former Ottoman Empire. And one of the first descriptions of sharpening stones in western writing comes from Pliny the Elder, who cites the Cretan stone as the non plus ultra of what was available at the time.

But the most commonly cited origin for the Turkish stone _is _modern day Turkey - particularly around Iconium (Konya). This idea appears to date from an 1836 collection of stones belonging to a Mr. Richard Knight. In which he describes the Turkey Oil-Stone thus: ‘As a whet-stone, it surpasses every other known substance, and possesses, in an eminent degree, the property of abrading the hardest steel… Little more is known of its natural history than that it is found in the interior of Asia Minor, and brought down to Smyrna for sale.’

This is something that has been occupying the minds of people for at least two hundred years then. Given that there appear to be no first-hand historical reports to confirm or deny any of this, we perhaps need to approach the question from a different perspective. And an aspect that hasn’t been explored much before is that of _nomenclature_.

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For many centuries effectively all British trade with the Ottoman Empire was conducted, by royal charter, through members of the Levant Company, or ‘Turkey Company’. They themselves were known as ‘Turkey Merchants’, and many of their goods attracted the adjectival description ‘Turkish’ or ‘Turkey’. Furthermore in the 19th century whetstones were among their most important imports, we can see in this Levant Company duty document that by 1818 they were already being brought into Britain by the thousand, ‘in casks, the 100’.

This ties in quite well with the accounts that have the Turkish stone brought in oil-filled barrels or casks to Smyrna (Izmir), which was one of the most important trade hubs for the Levant Company. Indeed they had a consul there, as well as at Constantinople (Istanbul) and Aleppo. The latter is not a port city, but is close to another important hub at Alexandretta (Iskendurun).

Let’s now have a look at a map detailing the main historical trade routes, so we can get our head around all this geography.







The coastline of the Levant is peppered with port cities, and at the very least we might reasonably expect that if origin of the Turkish stone was to be found in Syria/Lebanon/Jordan/Israel/Palestine then they would have been traded from Iskendurun. Little point in taking heavy cargo on the long and dangerous road to Smyrna, when plenty of boats are waiting for you far closer. As the crow flies Konya is almost equidistant between Smyrna and Iskendurun, though the map above has goods passing through Constantinople, on a far longer journey. From Crete however a stone would almost certainly have been taken to Smyrna - which is easily the nearest major trading port.

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As you can probably tell I have spent some time looking into all this. If I still lived in the UK I’m relatively certain that the answer could be found in the records of the Levant Company in the British National Archives at Kew, which is quite close to where I’m from. But currently the historical evidence is inconclusive; we know there are historic chert deposits and quarries around Konya, but equally that the area around Elounda on Crete has been a source of highly-prized whetstones for thousands of years.

Whetstones that are still available to purchase today...







[Parts 2 & 3 to follow, and will have more pictures in them I promise. Quite a lot more.]


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## cotedupy (Aug 23, 2021)

Now one doesn't need to be Hercule Poirot to notice that in the picture at the end of Part 1, the three stones are not _entirely _identical_._

The Turkish Oilstone is a form of dense, but relatively friable and porous novaculite. The two above have been used as oilstones for well over a hundred years, and we might expect their colour to have changed somewhat in that time. I have only ever degreased the first, once, but the difference in appearance even after 20 minutes was notable.

In the picture below the oil has been partially removed from the surface of the stone, to reveal the original colour tending to a light grey. It would have gone far lighter than this, but it is still happily the most remarkable change I have observed from degreasing any stone, in the shortest period of time. After another 20 minutes the oil from the middle of the stone had seeped back to the surface, and it reverted to the dark grey of the previous picture.






So what happens when we try soaking the Cretan stone in oil (as is recommended)? The picture below shows it after just five minutes, next to the second Turkish stone.






Even Monsieur Poirot's interest will be piqued by this I imagine.

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But before we look at how the stones are to use in Part Three, let's have a closer visual look. These images are taken using a USB scope at about 600x magnification, it's not the poshest microscope in the world, but it gives an idea of things.

First Turkish:






Second Turkish:






Cretan:






Now unless you've looked at loads of stones before on this kind of scope, those pictures probably don't tell you much, so I'll offer some insight...

These three stones are similar, but they're not identical. In fact they look more similar in the normal pictures than they do under the microscope images above. The two Turkish stones are a highly homogenous form of novaculite that is still not quite as compacted or closely bonded as something like a hard Arkansas. The Cretan stone also looks like novaculite, but we have a looser more heterogenous grit, more similar to Idwal stones I've looked at. Overall though they _are_ more similar than they are different.

Now let's look again- these images are taken at exactly the same magnification, but using a technique I came across by chance. The surface of the stone is oiled, left for a few minutes and then brushed clean. The way the oil impacts lighting and focus reveals different aspects of the surface of the stone not visible before.

First Turkish:






Second Turkish:






Cretan:






In these images the stones are far more similar - Idwals, Washitas, Arks &c. don't look like this. We can still see more heterogeneity in the Cretan stone, but also that the underlying structure of the stone actually looks to be more densely packed, and less porous - the dark areas in the image above.

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To end Part 2 here are the specific gravities of the three stones. Again these are pretty similar in the grand scheme of things, and they are _very _dense. We're in Translucent Arkansas territory here, especially the Cretan. The specific gravity of pure quartz is around 2.65.

Turkish 1 - 2.53
Turkish 2 - 2.58
Cretan - 2.63

(The weights were _not _taken in water).


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## stringer (Aug 23, 2021)

cotedupy said:


> Now one doesn't need to be Hercule Poirot to notice that in the picture at the end of Part One, the three stones are not _entirely _identical_._
> 
> The Turkish Oilstone is a form of dense, but relatively friable and porous novaculite. The two above have been used as oilstones for well over a hundred years, and we might expect their colour to have changed somewhat in that time. I have only degreased one of them, once, but the difference in appearance even after 20 minutes was remarkable. In the picture below the oil has been partially removed from the surface of the stone, to reveal the original colour tending to a light grey. It would have gone far lighter than this, but it is still happily the most remarkable change I have observed from degreasing any stone, in the shortest period of time. After another 20 minutes the oil from the middle of the stone had seeped back to the surface, and it reverted to the dark grey of the previous picture.
> 
> ...



Awesome stuff. I measured some of mine just out of curiosity. Using the displacement method and a gram scale. 
Washita 2.17
Aizu 2.21
Soft Ark 2.30
Jasper #1 2.41
Hard Ark 2.45
Unknown Reddish Stone 2.46
Jasper #2 2.48
Unknown Greenish Brown Stone 2.48
Turkish 2.61
Translucent Ark 2.64
Coti/BBW #2 2.87
Coti/BBW #3 2.98
Coti/BBW #1 3.02


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## cotedupy (Aug 23, 2021)

So what are they like?

Firstly it's worth noting that the Turkish Oilstone has a... err... 'singular' smell when lapping - it smells of Hydrogen Sulphide, or rotten eggs. The Cretan stone does too.

The stones have similar types of inclusions; in the picture below the Cretan stone is on the left (after only a short soak in oil):






But after a couple of days the Cretan stone, again on the left, also now _looks _almost identical:





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And in use...

The Turkish Oilstone is a remarkable stone. In terms of speed it is completely unequalled by anything, natural or synthetic, that I've tried.

The stone is comparable to a Washita in that it can be used with varying pressure to give an effective 'grit' level going from around 500 up to about 7k. But it's faster than a Washita, and doesn't clog as much, both of which I assume are down to how friable the stone is - grit is released and new surface is being exposed constantly when worked heavily. This does mean that to use a single stone for a full progression the surface should be wiped clean occasionally, otherwise you will have large particles on the surface which will impede the evenness of the edge at lighter pressure. Like the Washita I find that the Turkish stone is markedly improved when used with oil.

Here's a Tosa knife I sharpened this evening from fairly blunt 'factory setting' to nearing HHT 4 using the first Turkish stone:





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The Cretan stone behaves in the same way. The larger particles that we saw under the microscope in Part 2 mean that the finish is not quite as fine as my first Turkish Stone - it's more similar to the second, despite the fact that the first Turkish has the lowest SG reading of the three. Nevertheless the Cretan stone has similarly wide-ranging abilities.

The video below shows a small paring knife, again from 'factory setting', which I needed to thin, remove some height, and sharpen. All of that was done in about 5 mins on the Cretan stone:





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Here I should point out that I have no skin in this game - I'm not going to be selling my old Turkish Oilstones, nor do I sell Cretan stones. But after all this I'm going to have to give an opinion, aren't I!

To my mind, beyond any reasonable doubt, the modern Cretan stone _was _sold in the past as the Turkish Oilstone.

That doesn't discount the possibility that there was more than one original source for the Turkish stone - the Ottoman Empire was a large place - but I can tell you with near certainty that Crete was one of them. And if I was a betting man, given what I've found from research, I would say likely the only one.


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## cotedupy (Aug 23, 2021)

And as a final addendum - I have stolen the title of this thread from a member on a razor forum. Because I liked it, and thought it sounded suitably grand and literary. After reading his thread I got in touch with Vasilis, and it was him who provided me with the Cretan stone.

They are also easily available online, do not cost much, and needless to say... I would strongly recommend buying one.


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## cotedupy (Aug 23, 2021)

stringer said:


> Awesome stuff. I measured some of mine just out of curiosity. Using the displacement method and a gram scale.
> Washita 2.17
> Aizu 2.21
> Soft Ark 2.30
> ...



Very interesting! That sounds like a very nice, soft Washita you have there... I imagine that's a great stone . And I hadn't even considered that cotis would be so much denser, though obviously it makes sense.

I'll try the proper water method to measure my stones tomorrow, and see how it compares to the first set of readings...


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## stringer (Aug 23, 2021)

cotedupy said:


> Very interesting! That sounds like a very nice, soft Washita you have there... I imagine that's a great stone . And I hadn't even considered that cotis would be so much denser, though obviously it makes sense.
> 
> I'll try the proper water method to measure my stones tomorrow, and see how it compares to the first set of readings...



I was really surprised how dense the coticules are too. That's the only thing that really surprised me.


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## stringer (Aug 23, 2021)

I just looked it up. If you had a pure spessartine garnet it would have a specific density of about 4.15. Much denser than the 2.65 of silica quartz.


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## ModRQC (Aug 23, 2021)

Good research, excellent lecture, thanks for all the efforts.


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## Desert Rat (Aug 23, 2021)

That was awesome.
Thank you!


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## cotedupy (Aug 24, 2021)

stringer said:


> I just looked it up. If you had a pure spessartine garnet it would have a specific density of about 4.15. Much denser than the 2.65 of silica quartz.



Blimey! Yeah I didn't know it was that dense. Certainly makes sense when you look at your SGs for the cotis though.

Interesting too that your Turkish / PdL ties in exactly with my ones. I'd expect the French type to be lighter (just a hunch), so I think perhaps yours is the same type as these then


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## captaincaed (Aug 24, 2021)

Freaking neat write up thank you! One more to keep an eye on...


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## cotedupy (Aug 28, 2021)

A further addition...

I have found a 19th century reference to whetstones produced and exported from Candia (Crete). On page 718 of this publication of 1839 they are listed among the main exports of the island, 'said to be of excellent quality'. And, significantly, they went _principally to Turkey, _from where we might very well expect them to have been traded out of Smyrna.

This is actually the most concrete contemporaneous English-language source I've come across referencing whetstones from anywhere in the former Ottoman Empire.


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## cotedupy (Sep 5, 2021)

Another update on an aspect of these stones I didn't know about...

I took the Cretan stone for a proper spin removing some sandblasting and thinning a knife the other day, gave it a clean up, and was rather surprised to see this:






By rights novaculite shouldn't do this. Anyone who's put a bevel on a Washita or Ark will know that they kinda burnish steel, and it looks pretty ugly. So what's going on...?

As I said above - although the Turkish / Cretan stone is as dense as a hard ark, it's comparatively soft and friable. This is what makes it so quick, and means that more pressure makes it work coarser. It's quite a messy affair using one like this; oily, gritty, swarf is formed almost instantly, and as you continue to work it it becomes a black pasty mud:






I received another cheap ebay find a couple of days ago. A seriously good and quite large old Turkish, in at 170x56x29. It's probably the finest finishing of my four stones, but it still works seriously fast with pressure:






Trying it out I did a bit of thinning on one of my own knives, to see if I'd get the same results. This is a 150mm k-tip petty, about 2mm at the spine, so the picture below is zoomed in quite a lot - it's _seriously _thin at the edge. I need to put a microbevel on it, otherwise this will just crumble:






And the same result with the polishing (both knives are Aogami 2 with I think soft steel cladding). As in the picture above there're basically no visible scratches whatsoever, the hagane isn't as bright and mirror-y as you'd get on a Japanese stone, but the Jigane is relatively dark, so still has nice contrast. It looks rather good I think!





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## cotedupy (Oct 27, 2021)

[Here's a post or two about what you might want to look for if trying to find an old Turkish Oilstone, and what to do if you do.]


It'd been a little while since I had a fun game of Cheap-Online-Mystery-Stone-Roulette, so I went on to FB marketplace the other day and found something I thought looked promising:






Now in that picture the stone could be anything, and if you play COMSR very much, you'll soon find that this kind of thing almost invariably turns out to be some cr*ppy old SiC stone. But there were a couple of things here that caught my eye, and thought it worth a spin. Firstly the chip in the top left corner, and the cracking in the bottom right. There also seems to be a big 'U' shape on the surface where you can possibly see through the grime to what the stone looks like underneath, and it doesn't look entirely homogenous. But the thing that really swung it for me, and made me think it was probably a natural stone, was that someone's chamfered it. And people just don't really bother chamfering SiC or AlOx. Still though; it could be anything really.

When I first unwrapped it today the stone was kinda wedged in the top of the box, so I first saw the 'bottom' of the stone. And if they'd posted a picture of that on FB originally I would have bought it without hesitation - there's something here that looks very promising indeed, more on which later:






Here's the 'top' side:






You can see above that 'U' shape where we might be able to see the surface of the stone (the shape is irrelevant, it's just a bit where you could see under all the grime). Here's a closeup, there appear to be some white lines or stripes running parallel to the length of the stone. This is characteristic of Turkish Oilstones:






At this point I'm pretty confident, but don't know for sure. The real doubt in fact, is not the look or feel of the stone - it's sheer bloody size of it. At 202 x 55 x 27 this would be notably larger than any old Turkish I have, and probably larger than any I've ever seen pictures of. But let's clean it up and have a look...


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## natto (Oct 27, 2021)

I looked up a greece source
Home
but like before buyers have to contact them.


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## cotedupy (Oct 27, 2021)

I tend to do this for any stone initially with warm soapy water and a scrubbing brush. If you don't know for sure what you're dealing with it’s quite a gentle way to get an idea - there are certain types of stone you wouldn't want to just chuck straight into a bucket of engine degreaser.

And here's how she cleans up...






The Turkish Oilstone Fairy strikes again! You can see those parallel white lines/inclusions I was talking about, and here now all cleaned-up is a closeup of the part on the underside that made me optimistic the moment I unwrapped it:






That kind of almost flint-like cracking is very distinctive of these stones, but in pictures it might be hidden, either intentionally, or because it's on the bottom and covered by a box. This side of the stone would be usable if properly lapped, but I'm going to concentrate on the top side, even though it's slightly dished.

This is now when I chuck it it in some degreaser. I only had quite a mild version to hand, but Turkish stones are very porous for novaculites, so even after 20 mins there's a noticeable colour change as we remove some of the dirty oil and swarf from the surface of the stone. If you did this for an hour plus with stronger degreaser the stone would go almost white.






I then lap it... a bit... this stone is _hard_! Turkish stones are quite hard, but again - in terms of novaculite, they're usually quite friable. This one is very much at the harder end of the spectrum; I rather wished I had some coarser sandpaper / my atoma wasn't so worn out. Hey ho... I did a bit, but left it slightly dished for the moment. We're not done yet though...

You'll have noticed, I imagine, that Turkish stones are somewhat prone to cracking, and I don't want to leave the stone as it is in the picture above; all dried out on the surface from degreaser and dishwashing liquid. So I recondition it, either by soaking in mineral oil or, because for this one I couldn't find a big enough bit of tupperware, by soaking some kitchen towel and then wrapping it up.






About five mins of that and it's basically ready to rock and roll:






My Cretan stone is out on loan to another member atm, but here's a family shot with my other three old Turkish. The first two are roughly 6 x 2, the third a bit over 6.5 x 2, and today's one in excess of 8 x 2. As I say - this is one of, if not _the _largest old Turkish Oilstone I've ever seen.


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## cotedupy (Oct 27, 2021)

natto said:


> I looked up a greece source
> Home
> but like before buyers have to contact them.



Yep that's the homepage of the Cretan quarry owners - the Perakis family. Here's a retail link for them if anyone's interested: Cretan Knives Skalidakis Natural Sharpening Stone of Crete Ladakono 6000/8000 Grit | Cretan knives

(As I've said before - I've no commercial link, but please do remove that mods if it breaches rules).


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## PineWood (Oct 28, 2021)

Very interesting!
May I add some experience on an older web page, by Bart Torfs, he used to be the master sharpener of Ardennes Coticule:





Cretan hone - home of the famous Belgian Coticule Whetstone


A cozy forum about Coticule hones and straight razor shaving



www.coticule.be


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## cotedupy (Oct 28, 2021)

PineWood said:


> Very interesting!
> May I add some experience on an older web page, by Bart Torfs, he used to be the master sharpener of Ardennes Coticule:
> 
> 
> ...




Thank you!

I should probably have linked to that somewhere in this thread; I think Bart was the first person to do a properly detailed look at the Cretan stone in this context, as far as I know anyway. And it goes into some more of the etymological details and confusion that I left out, for fear of my original posts getting too long...

Firstly the 'Levant' stone of Belgium, which I've seen referred to as 'Pierre dite Levant'. And various French 'Levant' stones; there's certainly a type of Saurat stone that people call 'Levant', but I believe others too (?)

The one that is (I am almost certain) the Turkish Oilstone, is the 'Pierre du Levant' that was also known as 'Pierre du Candie' or 'Candia Stone'. Mentioned by someone replying to Bart's post:

"La pierre du Levant was carried to Marseilles from the east. According to a source, this stone came from Candie (Heraklion) and was put in olive oil for 4 or 5 monthes to harden it."

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The final piece of nomenclative interest and mystery, which I also left out for fear of things getting too niche, is that of the _Grecian Hone_...

Historically there haven't been many types of novaculite commercially quarried as whetstones in the English-speaking world. The most notable being; Arkansas and Washita, Llyn Idwal, Charnley, and Turkish. Of the first four - the one that can sometimes bear most similarity to an old Turkish Oilstone is the Welsh Idwal stone, also known as the 'Grecian Hone'*.

But why were they called that?

I don't know the answer, but I assume to differentiate them from similar-looking 'Turkish' stones. An interesting name though, given the history of Crete; long part of the Ottoman Empire, against the will of the majority of the population, who considered themselves Greek.


* The term 'Grecian' seems sometimes used to refer to Idwal stones in general, and sometimes to a particular type of Idwal.


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