Thread: Yellow Coticule/Belgian Blue Whestone as first hone?

Hi all,

Yesterday I ordered Lynn's DVD, and am now looking into what would be a good hone to get.

I tend to lean towards dish-resistant stones for maintenance reasons, and natural stones for aesthetic reasons.

I've come across the “Yellow Coticule” and “Belgian Blue” whetstones on theinvisibleedge.co.uk, and both look quite appealing to me, and the write up on the websites suggest they'd both give a finish ready to go to the strop.

Any reason not to go for one of them?

russell,

If you are new to straight razor shaving, I would hold off on purchasing honing equipment at this stage--unless you want to put an edge on straight razors you purchase from antique shops or off of ebay.

A properly maintained shave ready razor should last you about 6 mos. to a year without needing any honing.

I would recommend purchasing a balsa strop with Chromium Oxide paste to help maintain the sharpness of your straight razor right now.

If you read through the posts on the hones and honing sections you will quickly see there are a few tried and true synthetic hones people use over and over. I would start with those and when you get more experience then you can delve into the world of natural hones.

Belgian sharpening stones

This website is a lot lot cheaper and sells the nani superstones as well. If your new to shaving I wouldn't practise honing on your main razor

Cheers for all the replies

I'm happy to hear that stropping will be enough for the first 6 months or so - I can take my time in choosing a hone.

I'm probably gonna get a starter kit from theinvisibledge.co.uk, so I may pick up a strop from there to load with chromium oxide.

Hi all。

I just did a bit of research, and it turns out my Sigma 6000 stone is actually finer than the Norton 8000 (2 mictons +/- 0.4 microns vs. 3 microns). So it looks like maybe I won't need a new hone after all...

I got the stats from this thread:
Looking for Micron Ratings for Sigma Stones