Thread: About Blues and Yellows

For the better part of the past year, I 've been honing with nothing more than one DMT 1200, 3 Belgian Blues and a small collection of Coticules. I have conducted many comparative tests.
So far I have not thoroughly rounded up my conclusions so far, in one post. Maybe it's time I did.

I found no real variance between the Blues, they all behave very closely the same.
This is not so with Coticules. They show significant variance when used with slurry, but differences practically dissipate when they're used with water.

With slurry all coticules level off at a certain keenness that is only barely shaveable.
When this level is reached, diluting the slurry every 10 laps with 2 drops of water till eventually all slurry is washed away over the course of 70 to 100 laps, dramatically improves the keeness, but the final outcome is a bit unpredictable.

The Belgian Blue with slurry is in absolute terms much slower than the coticule.
The Belgian Blue with slurry also levels off at a certain keenness, but this keenness is sharper than that left by the coticule with slurry.
The diluting trick on the Blue works too, but to a lesser degree than on the Coticule.
The Blue with water only does hardly anything on hard razor's steel.

A Coticule, when used with water as a polisher/finisher, smooths out almost any edge, also those that are sharper than what can be achieved with the Coticule by itself. It will not refine the edge as such, only smooth out the previous scratch pattern and leave it there.

With a heavy slurry, a good coticule can easily do the work of a DMT-1200 for honing out small edge defects, at the cost of some rounding at the bevel tip. For all other use on razors the slurry must be kept thin. Slurry on the Blue must also be kept thin.

Controversial, but I stand by it: Belgian hones don't lend their unique properties form a very fine grit rate. They are unrivaled because they leave such shallow scratch patterns, left by their round honing garnets that create a wavy surface. As a result the edge is far less jagged than that of many synthetic hones. This also means that the edge of the Blue with its larger garnets is even less jagged than that of the Coticule, a capacity that explains the higher level of keeness left by the Blue with slurry than that left by the Coticule with slurry. I will elaborate on that in a thread I plan on posting next week.

Bart.