Thread: Belgian coticule, clarifications

Originally Posted by Howard

The coticule is an 8000 grit stone which puts it firmly in the camp of "finishing stones". To set or reset a bevel you need a much coarser stone or you'll be honing forever. I reset bevels on a Shapton 1k or a DMT8E (1200 grit). It should take only a couple of minutes. Once you've got the bevel right from heel to toe on both sides, then progress upwards through the belgian blue 4k and then the coticule 8k. Use the right tool for the right job.

I disagree with this statement. Coticule garnet size is 5 to 15 micron. I don't like correlating that to grit, but it's closer to 1K than to 8K. There is variance in speed between Coticules, but so there is between different DMT-1200's. The more use a DMT has seen, the slower it performs. With coticules the speed variance is related to how well the stone releases fresh garnets in the slurry during the honing process.
When used with slurry, the Coticules I've tried fast enough to be able to do the work of a 1K hone.
The performance completely chances when no slurry is raised. The garnets remain embedded in the surface, on most Coticules no new garnets emerge while honing, and the Coticule is a very slow polisher in that mode. That verstaility is, as far as I know, exlusive to Coticule hones.

Apart from repairing damage, razors can be honed on nothing but one Coticule. Add a DMT 325 and a 600, and you have all your ever need for restoring and honing razors.

There are many other hones, that work equally well, and in the search of ulterior keenness, one of the modern very high grit synthetics might come in handy, albeit not completely necessary.

I have honed 4 razors on Sunday, that were all dull beyond shaving arm hair, a few of them had a double bevel. All were honed on one single Coticule (I used a different stone for each one). No pasting. Only stropping on a clean leather strop. I had the time to test them today. They all performed excelllent.
It took me about 15 minutes per razor.

I'll post the method in a new thread later on tonight.

Bart.

Originally Posted by Bart

I'll post the method in a new thread later on tonight.

Bart.

Cool, I look forward to it.