Thread: Vintage Coticule?

Originally Posted by Utopian

I have nine vintage combo coticules and one that is, as Jimmy oddly put it, a "natural of recent vintage."

Big LOL I had to sit here a minute and figure out why "natural of recent vintage" was "oddly put". Indeed the rock is as old as the that of earlier vintage. I should have said recently quarried or harvested.

Obviously Ron does not have a problem with HAD. He has nine vintage combo coticules ....... like any normal person.

Originally Posted by Utopian

I have nine vintage combo coticules and one that is, as Jimmy oddly put it, a "natural of recent vintage." Every one of them is different. Each one of them behaves slightly differently because of the simple fact that each of them actually is different. New or old, if your hone does not share saw marks with one of my hones, then your hone is going to be different from mine.
They're all different.
That is the nature of a natural hone, also known as a piece of ROCK.

Natures quality control does not work according to our standards, wether the stone is sedimentary or igneous she pretty much lets the raw material do as it will in accordance with the natural forces influencing it at the moment. Even two pieces of stone cut from a single piece of stone will have differences, sometimes large, some times small. No body is controlling the mix, the quality of any piece of stone is wholly arbitrary! As for vintage vs newly marketed, this would have to be fallacy, its all from the same time period, the same mix and the same natural influencess over the years.

Originally Posted by nun2sharp

Natures quality control does not work according to our standards, wether the stone is sedimentary or igneous she pretty much lets the raw material do as it will in accordance with the natural forces influencing it at the moment. Even two pieces of stone cut from a single piece of stone will have differences, sometimes large, some times small. No body is controlling the mix, the quality of any piece of stone is wholly arbitrary! As for vintage vs newly marketed, this would have to be fallacy, its all from the same time period, the same mix and the same natural influencess over the years.

The word "igneous" being unfamiliar to me,I googled it. Found this interesting website ,among many others, here for anyone who is interested in a bit of geology. I must have been looking out the window daydreaming when they were teaching this in school.

All I remember about that from junior high science was igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic are the three types of rocks--just in case you want to do a little more googling!

Originally Posted by Utopian

All I remember about that from junior high science was igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic are the three types of rocks--just in case you want to do a little more googling!

I forgot to mention meta morphic, I mustve been sitting in class looking out the window at that time, or was It suzie that caught my eye?

Originally Posted by nun2sharp

I forgot to mention meta morphic, I mustve been sitting in class looking out the window at that time, or was It suzie that caught my eye?

Back then I would have been more interested in Suzie's metamorphosis too.

Originally Posted by ArdennesCoticule

The only reason why I think that there are people saying that vintage Coticule stones are better for straight razor use then new Coticule stones is the following:

Most of the vintage Coticule stones that you guys find on eBay or in your local antique store are stones used by barbers or by private straight razor users. The Coticule miner companies from 100 years ago selected these stones specially for the use of straight razors. Before World War 2 there was a large exportation of Coticule stones for straight razor use to the USA and UK. So most of the vintage Coticule stones you guys are finding in the USA and UK are perfect stones for straight razors!

After World Ward 2 there only was a small exportation to the USA and this came to an end around 1960-1980. Around 1960 the last mine closed and in the '80's the last quarry went broke. So a lot of the Coticule knowledge disappeared (knowledge in terms of 'which Coticule is good for which use').

We, Ardennes Coticule, officially restarted the last quarry in 1998 and are planning to re-open the last mine in 2009. In our family (Ardennes Coticule is a family business) we have a lot of knowledge about quarrying and mining (The Coticule quarry and mine aren't our first quarry and mine) but we didn't had much knowledge about the Coticule stone (both in terms of the use and the distribution world wide).

So in the very beginning we sold every Coticule for every purpose. None of our family members knew that for example straight razor users preferred softer stones and wood workers the harder ones!
We had to learn all this from unsatisfied customers, from talks with Coticule users from the old days and so on ... .
The Coticule stones sold by us in the beginning of our company are Coticule stones from an excellent quality but were sold for the wrong purpose (example: not soft enough for straight razor use)!
But that's the past. Right now costumers have to specify the purpose of their stone and they will receive the right Coticule stone!
All the stones sold by our USA and UK distributors for straight razor use are excellent for that very purpose and are even good as the vintage Coticule stones!

But keep in mind that we are working with natural stones! All the stones are unique and sometimes we have Coticule stones that are extremely soft and that contain a very high concentration of garnets.
If you got a vintage Coticule like this you could easily say that it's better than a 'new' Coticule but you can also find a vintage Coticule which is harder and/or contains less garnets then a 'newer' one.
So I'm sure you guys understand that there are Coticule stones floating around in the straight razor community that are less suitable for this use. Are these stones bad? No, they are excellent Coticule stones, but not suitable for straight razor use.

It all depends on the vein from which the Coticule comes!

More info: Coticule Layer Round Up - Part 1 (Warning - 62 pictures) - Badger & Blade

Thanks Rob!

it drives me crazy when I here guys talking about how much better the older stones are when age really makes no difference, it's the stone. A new stone can be better than the older one, just depends on the vein. Thanks again...Rich

I also got one from Howard, an 8x3, soft as butter, very nice stone.

I think there's one other reason for this vintage-coticules-are-better theme. There was a particular mine that was highly revered that closed somewhere around the end of the nineteenth century. The mine had a French name I can't remember, but coticules from this vein were called "old rock" or "deep rock." Some of the old geological textbooks from the 1920s or thereabouts say in essence 'they don't make 'em like they used to.' I think some of the old barber's textbooks from that period also say something of the sort, and maybe even Arthur Boon's (?) I seem to recall...

This meme seems to have filtered into modern discussion of coticules, but the comparison is dated, having to do with hones from the early part of the 20th century vs. hones from the 19th. There are new veins since. In fact, it seems likely that many of what we call "vintage coticules" are from the period that wasn't supposed to be so good.

I think we have to bear in mind that 50 years and longer ago, there were no Nortons, no DMT's, no Shaptons. The bulk of synthetic hones people had access to were much too coarse to be used on razors. Coticules were used as work horses. Loom strops, such as the model that Dovo sells till this day forward, were commonly used with a red paste, to refine the edge further after it came off the coticule. This traditional method of honing is still taught today on various straight razor revival courses in Belgium (and I guess also in other countries).
This use of the coticule is completely different than the on SRP mostly endorsed use of it as a finishing hone, after sharpening on hones that didn't exsist in the "vintage" days.

For the traditional use as a sharpening hone that fits in the realm of the Norton 4K and even of the DMT1200, it is imperative that the coticule in question has good slurry formation abilities. But even that doesn't tell everything. I have used coticules that raised slurry very easily, but still couldn't move hard razor's steel fast enough to be used for serious sharpening of a blunt edge. Those exact same coticules worked just fine on the softer steel of kitchen knifes. The rate at which the slurry darkens while honing is good indication for assessing the rate at which it removes steel.

On the other end of honing, for polishing an already keen edge, the coticule does not need to move steel fast. Slurry is to be avoided so the very softest stones are to be ruled out. After that, we're left with the question how much difference there is between the medium and hard stones and also if the hardness by itself tells the whole story. I don't know.
I have visited different former mining sites, climbed a few fences and took calculated health risks to pick up rocks of raw coticule. Having them cut to strips costed me more than purchasing a few hones at Ardennes (which I have also done, cheers Rob). It took me and my pal Kris countless hours to lap a few of the most promising samples completely flat. Among them are a few glass-hard specimen. At first, I thought they were not doing anything. Although under 40X magnification the steel shows a beautiful polished surface, the edges were always unsatisfactory.
It was not before I bought an outstanding high-grit synthetic hone (the Naniwa Chosera 10K), that I discovered the virtues of those hard coticules. They turn a fantastic edge into a freekingly fantastic edge. But, to reiterate, if you 'd expect those particular samples to improove the given keenness of an edge, then you're going to be dissapointed.

Many coticules offer a good comprise between being avid cutters with slurry and smooth polishers with water. In most cases, I am strongly convinced that the final results are much more limited by the honers skills and not so much by the hones capabilities. In the extremes, some coticules might polish a bit finer and others might cut more rapidly, but it's still the call of the honer how to use it and where to place it in a progression.

Rob, I would very much like to assess coticules for you. It would allow me to gather more empirical data about these historical hones to which I have develloped such a big fondness, and it could help you to finetune your differentiaton system.

Best regards,
Bart.