Thread: About Blues and Yellows

Originally Posted by Maximilian

Same here. I got my combo from Howard and it's an excellent performer.
I mostly use my blue with lots of slurry, continue until it's diluted and a few final laps with just plain water. Second the yellow, sometimes with a milky slurry or without. Again continue until diluted if used with slurry, wipe off and plain water for the final polishing
I can see the slurry or plain water turn grayish from all the steel removal and polishing. Never a problem shaving straight from my yellow. Always extremely smooth and sharp.
There seems to be a lot of quality performance between those natural stones but Howard just knows how to choose the right ones.

Howard recently came through for me also. He delivered a beautiful combo stone that is a joy to use. I still find the edge of a coticule lacking in the keeness department.Just not sharp enough. I still finish with either .5micron dp/CrOx or my Shapton 30K.

Originally Posted by Lt.Arclight

I still find the edge of a coticule lacking in the keeness department.Just not sharp enough. I still finish with either .5micron dp/CrOx or my Shapton 30K.

In slurry mode, the coticule is a hone for bevel correction. On dull razors, certainly if the bevel got convexed from a few touch-ups on paste, a good deal of steel needs to be removed before the apex is touching the hone again. I'm reposting a drawing I made several months ago, to illustrate this, in case gents new to honing are reading along. The drawing is self-explanatory.

It says "DMT 1200", but a coticule with slurry works just as well, and it provides a much nicer feedback than a DMT. The resulting edge is good, it shaves armhair, but I would never shave my beard with it. As Lt. Arclight pointed out: it's not sharp enough.
Hence the need to refine it. Some have claimed that they can do that with a coticule in water mode. I have not been able to do that on any of the coticules I tried. The diluting slurry trick gets the edge keener but it's notoriously impredictable. I think a refiner needs to be brought in. The blue with slurry is a viable option, most synthetic hones in the 4K till 8K range are too.
After that, the Coticule, now in water mode, rises again. Scratches need to be polished out, and with water and the garnets fixated in the stone's surface, it will do that very well, without affecting the sharpness. Once the peaks of the scratch pattern are gone, the effectiveness of the polishing diminishes exponentially. At the time it hits the bottom of the scratches, the Coticule has slowed down to practically zero. With water the Coticule really is a polisher and not much else. It puzzles me that some accredit their Coticules with refining abilities, when used with water. Maybe I haven't encountered one like that yet. (Which is bad for me and good for Rob)

Where the polishing qualities of Coticules meet their limit, I haven't found yet. A Coticule still improves the edges of my Naniwa Chosera 10K, a hone I specifically purchased to get keener edges than what I can get with the Belgian tandem.

Bart.

So, by his findings(the original post)...contrary to dollar value...the blue is actually a better razor hone.

Originally Posted by desol

So, by his findings...contrary to dollar value...the blue is actually a better razor hone.

Wow,, that was a leap

Not any BBW I have honed with, in fact some of the Vintage BBW's that were used as backing stones flat wreck a nice bevel with a quickness

Also please keep in mind this thread is 5 years old and you are reading info that has been proved to be only part of the story..

Ok. Just going off his post...his subjective findings from using them.

Originally Posted by desol

Ok. Just going off his post...his subjective findings from using them.

HUH????
You must be reading something different from me, granted Bart and I don't see eye to eye on a ton of stuff (I actually don't believe that a Coticule is magical) but I do agree with his statements here...
Again this is a very old thread and much of this got very blurry after more testing...




I like to think of hones in three categories:

1. Hones for bevel formation: DMT's 325 600 1200, Shapton 1K and 2K, Coticules with slurry,...

2. Hones for edge refinement: DMT 8000, Norton 4K, Shapton 4K and 8K, Belgian Blue with slurry,...

3. Hones for edge polishing: Chinese 12K, Shapton 16K and 30K, Nakayama, Coticule with water,..


and here


Maurice Celis told me in an e-mail, that Coticules have a garnet size of 5 to 15 micron and Blues
a size of 10 to 20 micron. In my logic the size of the garnets defines the scratch pattern of a hone.

Originally Posted by desol

So, by his findings(the original post)...contrary to dollar value...the blue is actually a better razor hone.

But if you actually read the final post from 2008, the BBW is not a finisher...so depending on how you want to look at it, it's not a "better razor hone"

Originally Posted by gssixgun

HUH????

Calm down. I'm new to this stuff...

Originally Posted by Catrentshaving

But if you actually read the final post from 2008, the BBW is not a finisher...so depending on how you want to look at it, it's not a "better razor hone"

Ah... i just read the first post from him...where he said he found he got a finer edge from the slower BBW. Anyway...thanks guys for the clarification. Let's put this one back to bed now.

D.

There was one thing in here I was hoping to get clarification on. That was the statement that you could go to a higher grit rated stone that might have left a 'keen crisp harsh' edge, go to the yellow side of a coticule and 'smooth' it out without losing all the keen properties from the previous rock!?! Pretty sure I'm gunna try going from my Ozuku to the yellow for 10 light perfect x strokes to see what happens to my shave!

Originally Posted by brooksie967

There was one thing in here I was hoping to get clarification on. That was the statement that you could go to a higher grit rated stone that might have left a 'keen crisp harsh' edge, go to the yellow side of a coticule and 'smooth' it out without losing all the keen properties from the previous rock!?! Pretty sure I'm gunna try going from my Ozuku to the yellow for 10 light perfect x strokes to see what happens to my shave!

In that case don't forget to add a pinch of magic wiffle dust to the water...

As far as I can see, an edge from a 30k shapton glass stone, for example is an edge from a 30k shapton glass stone, and and edge from a coticule is an edge from a coticule. If the coticule is used last, its a coticule edge.

But then again, I'm one of those confounded freethinkers banned forever from the church of Our Saviour the Coticule.

Come on in, Brooksie - the waters lovely...!

Regards,
Neil