Thread: ONE COTICULE HONING

Originally Posted by gssixgun

OK I hate to say this but you guys have actually talked around the question I asked...

So lets go back for a second and let me ask directly...

Are you guys saying that and edge sharpened to .47 microns is going to be less irritating than a blade sharpened to .45 microns????? Lets leave DE blades out of the equation and stones used to get there on a straight because again we are talking about the sides of the edge not the edge itself.... With DE's the coating could effect the shave comfort.... and on the straight the polish could effect the comfort... But again I can't wrap my brain around how a slightly duller blade shaves more comfortably than a "Scary Sharp" one...

Now if you were to say that you liked the polish off one stone better than another I could understand that.... That is a personal thing, I get that....

Yes, for my personal c0cktail of shaving technique, skin type and beard, the edge coming of my Naniwa Chosera 10K is too "sharp". This edge almost sucks itself through my whiskers. I can come to a full stop on the hardest to shave spot on top of my skin and start the stroke again, without even the need to pay attention. Unfortunately, this kind of keenness slices right through my hair papillae, leaving what I believe is often referred to as "weepers", randomly spread over my face.
If I "tone down" that edge on a Coticule with water, that resolves that situation for me. Perhaps I need to pay a very tiny bit more attention on my chin, but I get an equally close shave, with no real sting on the alum block, and I also don't get the fuzziness on my cheeks that builds up after a number of shaves with more aggressively finished razors. BUT: as I said earlier, my shaving technique has over time completely blended with the kind of edges I prefer.

For other people the same may be true for edges finished on a Shapton 16K, a paddle strop with 0.25 micron diamond spray, a Swaty barbers hone, the Norton 8K, or whatever.

I have not started this thread to claim superiority for Coticules. But I do claim that I could sell all my other hones (except my DMT 325 and 600) and be a happy shaver for the rest of my life. That thought has crossed my mind.

I hope that answers your question directy enough.

It's an interesting topic you brought up, Glen.

Kind regards,
Bart.

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

BTW, did anyone say dull or duller ? I agreed with too sharp but that doesn't mean that I am advocating dull.

Now that makes sense!!!! TY Jimmy I can understand the "Too Sharp Feeling" that is a smoothness issue and people could feel a difference on different stones because of the polish of each stone..... I get that....

What I was reading was that the edge was actually to sharp, and that was what was not clicking with my limited grey matter.....

Originally Posted by gssixgun

Now that makes sense!!!! TY Jimmy I can understand the "Too Sharp Feeling" that is a smoothness issue and people could feel a difference on different stones because of the polish of each stone..... I get that....

What I was reading was that the edge was actually to sharp, and that was what was not clicking with my limited grey matter.....

Glen, after you've been around awhile you will start to get to know all of these finer points.

JimmyHAD running and ducking for cover

Hey Bart... have you found that the same coticule will cut different razors at different speeds?

As I was saying before, when I was setting the bevel on the duck, the same coticule was getting darkened slurry after 10x, and after 30x it was very dark. With the T hessen bruch, it would darken after 30x to the point that maybe 8-10x did on the duck.

Just tonight I was working on a Clauss that actually had the bevel very close already (was basically shave ready, but not by me, and not up to my standards, so I dulled it on the beer bottle to re-hone it), and it was still taking forever. After ~75 strokes, I could barely detect that the swarf was darkened at all. My thinking that this lighter slurry was in fact cutting slower seemed to be confirmed when it really was taking longer than expected to get it shaving arm hair again. I probably did ~150 laps before I gave up with the coticule and went to the dmt 1200 which made very short work of it. I then proceeded to add the layer of tape for the double bevel and go back to work on the coticule as normal. To be fair here, though, I was taping the spine from the get go as this Clauss is quite minty without a single lick of hone wear and I decided to keep it that way. This would, I guess, create half the swarf of having the spine exposed (as I did with the duck and thb), but still, the coticule was taking forever and the dmt just cleaned up here in no time flat. I don't know if it's applicable, but I figured I would mention that the bevel on this Clauss is really narrow. Which I would have initially guessed would lead to quicker honing times due to the pressure per square inch when honing.

Have you noticed anything like this? Just some razors that are very stubborn on the coticule? I had one the other night that I was playing with that also was taking a good long time to move steel (this is all with the same coticule BTW) and I had to give up on it because I didn't really have time to be playing with honing in the first place. That was the first time I noticed the slow cutting, but I was waiting to post about it to see if it was just that one razor or what, but now that I've had another act this way, my curiosity is rising.

It would almost seem like some razors, for whatever reason (hardness?), just don't take kindly to the coticule, making it kind of unreasonable to set the bevel on one. Not that it's not possible, more that it would just take (IMHO) an unreasonable amount of strokes. But on the other hand, some set very quickly and effortlessly.

I guess this is why they say that certain razors demand certain hones?

That's me after the shave I got off my DA this morning. Took it from breadknife to a barely usable edge using another method, then dulled it and got it to a DARN FINE SHAVE with the one-coticule method. Fantastic! (Although I must admit, I added a 12k Shapton pro to help it out...I think the DA has a bit of a steel problem, it just wasn't that smooth off the coti...)

Thanks, Bart!

Originally Posted by pjrage

Hey Bart... have you found that the same coticule will cut different razors at different speeds?

Let's look at it theoretically. Spessartine Garnet (the cutting medium in Coticules) has a hardness of 7.5 on the Mohs scale. Razor's steel hardness typically varies between 56 and 64 on the Rockwell-C scale (HRC), which is a very wide spread. If we convert HRC into Mohs, we get 5 Mohs for HRC 56, and 6 Mohs for HRC-64. Conversions were done here: eFunda: Convert Hardness: Rockwell C-Scale
Both Mohs and Rockwell-C are non-linear scales. The differences in hardness between 56 and 64 are immense.
Bottom line, the answer is yes, you can expect differences in performance between various steels on a Coticule. The diamonds of a DMT-plate are 10 on the Mohs scale, but those slowly become rounder over time, which affects the performance, while the Coticule works with a constant flow of fresh garnets. In practice I've not found any problems doing bevel work on either a Coticule or a DMT-E. I can say that my DMT-E is tamed enough to no longer offer better speed than a typical Coticule, and it surely is surpassed by my faster ones. When I feel the need to drop down, I usually drop down to the DMT-F. It doesn't take much time to deal with the 600 grit scratches of that hone, on a Coticule with slurry.

Originally Posted by pjrage

I probably did ~150 laps before I gave up with the coticule and went to the dmt 1200 which made very short work of it.

By all means, I'm not here to talk you into using the Coticule at all times. Whatever sets the bevel is fine of course. But you could have literally been 20 laps from home, when you decided to go to the DMT, so it's impossible to draw much conclusions here. There's one important detail to mention: the complete bevel off the DMT will shave arm hair far more easily than that off the Coticule with slurry. Off the DMT, it often even passes a HHT. I have noticed that off the Coticule with slurry, some razors really can only barely manage to shave arm hair, certainly if the slurry was on the denser side in combination with the light-pressured back&forth strokes. When I feel it's time for testing, I often optimize my slurry (meaning that I add a few drops of water if it looks rather dense) and perform about 10-20 regular X-strokes. Expecially when you notice that the razor was starting to show "arm hair" responsiveness, but it didn't improve after another round of 20-30 laps, you must suspect that the edge just maxed out on slurry.
Be my guest finding it all a bit easier on the DMT-E, I'm just trying to stay close to the original premise of this thread.

Originally Posted by pjrage

I guess this is why they say that certain razors demand certain hones?

So far, I personally have not found much truth in that statement. I've honed from rather soft vintage Sheffield wedges to the extremely hard TI Silverwing, over stainless steel cryohardened Friodurs and Dovos to Manganese steel Bartmanns. I have DMT's at my disposal, a selection of Belgian naturals, the Choseras 5K and 10K, and a Nakayama. I never really found any steel related rules applicable to the choice of hones and honing methods. My face can discern between the hones, but my razors can't. At least not that I'm aware of.

Best regards,
Bart.

Originally Posted by Bart

Let's look at it theoretically. Spessartine Garnet (the cutting medium in Coticules) has a hardness of 7.5 on the Mohs scale. Razor's steel hardness typically varies between 56 and 64 on the Rockwell-C scale (HRC), which is a very wide spread. If we convert HRC into Mohs, we get 5 Mohs for HRC 56, and 6 Mohs for HRC-64. Conversions were done here: eFunda: Convert Hardness: Rockwell C-Scale
Both Mohs and Rockwell-C are non-linear scales. The differences in hardness between 56 and 64 are immense.
Bottom line, the answer is yes, you can expect differences in performance between various steels on a Coticule. The diamonds of a DMT-plate are 10 on the Mohs scale, but those slowly become rounder over time, which affects the performance, while the Coticule works with a constant flow of fresh garnets. In practice I've not found any problems doing bevel work on either a Coticule or a DMT-E. I can say that my DMT-E is tamed enough to no longer offer better speed than a typical Coticule, and it surely is surpassed by my faster ones. When I feel the need to drop down, I usually drop down to the DMT-F. It doesn't take much time to deal with the 600 grit scratches of that hone, on a Coticule with slurry.


By all means, I'm not here to talk you into using the Coticule at all times. Whatever sets the bevel is fine of course. But you could have literally been 20 laps from home, when you decided to go to the DMT, so it's impossible to draw much conclusions here. There's one important detail to mention: the complete bevel off the DMT will shave arm hair far more easily than that off the Coticule with slurry. Off the DMT, it often even passes a HHT. I have noticed that off the Coticule with slurry, some razors really can only barely manage to shave arm hair, certainly if the slurry was on the denser side in combination with the light-pressured back&forth strokes. When I feel it's time for testing, I often optimize my slurry (meaning that I add a few drops of water if it looks rather dense) and perform about 10-20 regular X-strokes. Expecially when you notice that the razor was starting to show "arm hair" responsiveness, but it didn't improve after another round of 20-30 laps, you must suspect that the edge just maxed out on slurry.
Be my guest finding it all a bit easier on the DMT-E, I'm just trying to stay close to the original premise of this thread.


So far, I personally have not found much truth in that statement. I've honed from rather soft vintage Sheffield wedges to the extremely hard TI Silverwing, over stainless steel cryohardened Friodurs and Dovos to Manganese steel Bartmanns. I have DMT's at my disposal, a selection of Belgian naturals, the Choseras 5K and 10K, and a Nakayama. I never really found any steel related rules applicable to the choice of hones and honing methods. My face can discern between the hones, but my razors can't. At least not that I'm aware of.

Best regards,
Bart.

Bart, I'm not trying to suggest that the DMT 1200 is better than the coticule or anything like that, I'm just pointing out some findings I've had with this method so that others might know what to expect. I hope you don't think I'm trying to drive us off topic that the DMT 1200 is a better bevel setter or anything like that, or that it fits into this method or whatever, I was just using it as a point of reference of how long I worked the coticule and how long I worked the DMT, and what the results were.

I very well may have been 30 laps from home so to speak, but I really don't think so. I was seeing virtually no improvement of the edge in 30 stroke sessions. I was doing x strokes the entire time (no back and forth strokes). I didn't purposely water down the slurry at all, but I do end up adding some more water over time which does water it down a bit, and eventually I would refresh it. I don't use the slurry circling technique yet and after 50 or 60 strokes, I feel the need to refresh the slurry because some of it has fallen off the sides causing the stone to dry out a bit. I actually lose quite a bit of slurry when I rinse the blade too as the blade seems to hold a bit of slurry in the hollow grind. Anyway, from completely dulled, I DID detect some improvement, but it seemed no matter how many strokes I would do, I couldn't get it shaving arm hair or passing the TNT to my liking.

Within 20 light strokes or so on the dmt, though, it was passing all my usual tests at that stage with flying colors (effortlessly popping arm hairs at skin level, and great TPT/TNT results). I too have found that edges off of the dmt are ridiculously sharp in a "will pop arm hairs with ease and slice right into your thumb pad" kind of way, but I did have very nice results off the coticule too with the other razors it worked for, and those razors worked out really well in the end.

Maybe I did just max out the sharpness off the coticule with the slurry level I was at, and needed to water it down some. That would definitely explain my results. I'll have to keep this in mind in the future and try at it again. Or maybe I really was just a set or two of 30x away from being there.

Either way, the shave was fantastic this morning

Thanks for the further info and details. If you can get this method to work on all of those types of steel, then it's clearly me and not the coticule. I'll keep working at it and practicing

Originally Posted by pjrage

Bart, I'm not trying to suggest that the DMT 1200 is better than the coticule or anything like that, I'm just pointing out some findings I've had with this method so that others might know what to expect. I hope you don't think I'm trying to drive us off topic that the DMT 1200 is a better bevel setter or anything like that, or that it fits into this method or whatever, I was just using it as a point of reference of how long I worked the coticule and how long I worked the DMT, and what the results were.

I very well may have been 30 laps from home so to speak, but I really don't think so. I was seeing virtually no improvement of the edge in 30 stroke sessions. I was doing x strokes the entire time (no back and forth strokes). I didn't purposely water down the slurry at all, but I do end up adding some more water over time which does water it down a bit, and eventually I would refresh it. I don't use the slurry circling technique yet and after 50 or 60 strokes, I feel the need to refresh the slurry because some of it has fallen off the sides causing the stone to dry out a bit. I actually lose quite a bit of slurry when I rinse the blade too as the blade seems to hold a bit of slurry in the hollow grind. Anyway, from completely dulled, I DID detect some improvement, but it seemed no matter how many strokes I would do, I couldn't get it shaving arm hair or passing the TNT to my liking.

Just a few thoughts, IME the DMT E is a better bevel setter than the coticule with slurry in the sense that it is faster. Mine is a well broken in continuous 8" plate. I wouldn't say it is better in the quality of the scratch pattern it leaves and that will require more work to clean up on the next level but I still find that it is faster overall.

In setting bevels back and forth strokes and circles are also going to increase the speed of the job. A really efficient way to remove steel.

If I am going to rinse the blade and I want to save the slurry I hold it vertically over the hone and just touch the water with the point and most of the slurry and water clinging to the hollow runs onto the hone. Then I rinse.

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

Just a few thoughts, IME the DMT E is a better bevel setter than the coticule with slurry in the sense that it is faster. Mine is a well broken in continuous 8" plate. I wouldn't say it is better in the quality of the scratch pattern it leaves and that will require more work to clean up on the next level but I still find that it is faster overall.

I tend to agree with you, based on my particular coticules, but I think Bart was hoping to refrain from discussing (in this thread) which hones or honing processes may be "better" and stick strictly to speaking about how to implement the one coticule honing method successfully.

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

In setting bevels back and forth strokes and circles are also going to increase the speed of the job. A really efficient way to remove steel.

I generally will use some circles or back and forths if I'm planning to remove a lot of steel, but as I mentioned, this particular razor had a bevel which was 90% there already, and it was 100% set before I dulled it, so it didn't need much work, and since it was so narrow, I expected to (re)set the bevel very quickly. I guess this added to why I was so baffled when the coticule wasn't performing as I expected.

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

If I am going to rinse the blade and I want to save the slurry I hold it vertically over the hone and just touch the water with the point and most of the slurry and water clinging to the hollow runs onto the hone. Then I rinse.

Great tip! I'll have to give this a go, as I think I lose the most slurry during the rinse and check. Especially on hollow ground razors.

Originally Posted by pjrage

I tend to agree with you, based on my particular coticules, but I think Bart was hoping to refrain from discussing (in this thread) which hones or honing processes may be "better" and stick strictly to speaking about how to implement the one coticule honing method successfully.

I generally will use some circles or back and forths if I'm planning to remove a lot of steel, but as I mentioned, this particular razor had a bevel which was 90% there already, and it was 100% set before I dulled it, so it didn't need much work, and since it was so narrow, I expected to (re)set the bevel very quickly. I guess this added to why I was so baffled when the coticule wasn't performing as I expected.

I think Bart would agree that if it is discussed it should be discussed as Cromwell wanted his portrait i.e. , "paint me as I am, warts and all". Just as positive testimonials are appreciated an alternative view should be presented if there is one IMO.

Just so I am not misunderstood, this is not negative criticism of Bart's method with the single coticule. I think Bart has preformed a real service in this thread to those who have one or more coticules but do not have a BBW or other hones. I have been thinking for some time about all of the barbers over the years who were using the yellow coticule as their main hone and Bart has worked hard to demonstrate that it is not only doable but effective. Personally I don't have the patience to stick with that when I have the DMT E to set bevels and the blue with slurry to get sharp before the yellow with water only to finish.

Another interesting point to me is the dulling of the edge on the glass. I remember when Bart presented this. It was a way of being sure that you were starting from scratch so to speak and that you weren't getting false positives in the TPT or HHT. In watching Harellson Stanely hone in the DVD "Honing The Perfect Edge" he goes beyond dulling on the glass. Rather he very gently and with finesse breadknifes the edge on the hone before he begins using his "side honing method".

When he gets to the 16K glass stone level he does it again ! Then he works with the 16k before moving on to the 30k. I was intrigued when Harellson did this before the honing began but I couldn't believe it when he did this at the 16k level. I spoke to him about it on the phone and he told me that if you were to look at the edge under 200x even past the 8k level you would see some micro chipping that needed to be cleaned up. Mind blowing to me and glad I only have 30x.