Must be something in that James. I'm told yellow Jnats are most popular in Japan also.
But we all know red Ferraris go faster than yellow Ferraris :p
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Yellow trans arks sell at a premium as well
Well undoubtably some enjoy the honing/stone collecting aspect of the hobby more than the instrument being sharpened. As for myself, I have always felt that honing is an accessory to straight razor shaving and not the other way round. Having said this, one of the caveats of using too many different hones is that it is akin to chasing too many rabbits. Ultimately it is how the razor performs after being stropped that matters most, and not the obsessive/compulsive practice of measuring minute differences in sharpness between hone A, B, C... That said, it is unfair in my opinion to dismiss the coticule as being impractical or too time consuming. Once you know what to aim for and you stick to one method, it becomes second nature and consequently less time consuming.
I have to agree that bang for your buck when it comes to Coti's, the 5"x2.5" is really nice to work with. I have another Pike 5" stone on the way this weekend that I'm excited to try out. I love my stamped 7"x2.5" Pike but it wasn't cheap.
Just a quick reality check. It is only about 350km from the mines of Thüringen to Solingen. Goods from Thüringen were shipped to the Ruhr area by the gigatons. Add the import tax for Belgian goods still in place back in the day.
Now, think.
How come so many Solingen manufacturers used to use Coticules (before the advent of readily available synthetic hones, although two still use them today).
Call me paranoid, but I get extremely suspicious whenever someone with a vested commercial interest in hones waxes lyrical about a certain (type of) hone. Especially when hundreds of advanced hobbyists get along only too well with the (typically much cheaper or much more readily available) alternatives.
And please bear in mind that still today, an 8k Norton and some Chromium oxide will make any razor fit for shaving, according to the one Honemeister.
Full disclosure: I own a "full set of synthetic hones", which I never use because I find switching between them and soaking them cumbersome. I also own one (1) Coticule, bought several years ago, which works for me. Last, I know several people who have used dozens or more Coticules without ever finding a bad one. Then again, they had no vested commercial interest in them, and therefore their standards must be a lot lower than... uhhh... or maybe not.
Yep, each to their own.
I love the argument that because my opinion is different to yours I must have lower expectations! That's a classic :)
I suppose one way to put it would be you wouldn't want to drive some massively powerful car that had twitchy handling every day, you would eventually just want to hop into something that can get you home with no drama. The coti edge is like a boxy Volvo with crumple zones and airbags everywhere.. I like the mellow touch of a well-done edge from a middle of the road coti, especially on Sheffield steel. Trans ark finish on a Sheffield is beautiful, but way too stressful given the price for one slip up. Other steel, like case or genco, or ti I tend to max out for all I can get.
I was thinking it's more like a volkswagen beetle or a citroen 2cv!!
I don't get any drama from arks, but I'm used to arks. I go back to the jnat koppa sized stones that a dealer says are good for a razor because every one I've gotten is finer than cotis and it's just what you say, no drama. Put the razor on the hone in a slurry, rub it in it, dilute it. it really doesn't even matter what direction the strokes are or the amount of pressure.
The unfortunate thing about all of them (unmarked cotis, generic jnats, etc) is that they're all going up in price. I guess the ark stones aren't, but I don't like the arks in small stones, and the 8x2s are a bit cumbersome for a hand hone in the bathroom. If cotis could match the jnat barber hones I have, they'd be in my upstairs bathroom, but in the handy 5x2.5 size. The equivalent jnat koppa (in size and cost) is something like 6x3.
I can't say much for escher, I think they work well, but they are, too me, a $100 stone that costs $500. I'll give them consistency, they are all almost identical if they are labeled and the same color.
I don't much care for thuris tbh with you, but that may be because so many of my blades are Sheffield steel and I really don't feel it is a good marriage.
So they were readily available, held up well with use, and apparently, did the job to the required standard. I don't think anyone is saying they are not adequate.
I think you and your buddy Paul are minimalists in the wet shaving world. Having experienced the excesses you've become proselytizers. Obsessed with the idea of saving people from themselves lest they spend too much on kit ......... be it razors, hones, brushes &tc.
Acquisition is the attraction that some of us have for this sport. More hones, more razors, more fun. So you are still using the same coticule/thuringan, or whatever, that you've had for years. Great.
Some of us want to try the next one, be it a razor, a brush, or hone. Glad there are entrepreneurial types who furnish us with the opportunity to pursue our passions, even if it is for the love of the buck rather than the love of the sport. :)
The trans ark Sheffield comment is more rooted in the fact it takes a huge number of laps on a stone that can kill an edge pretty easily and more often than not, the blades are warped a touch or have sketchy geometry you have to work with. It's just a headache. All that said, I consider a trans ark to be one of the ultimate western finishers... I rate it above thuri, at least.
First, there was this:
Now, there is this:
And somehow, the two of them together don't quite add up, do they?
As an aside, not everybody thought that the aforementioned, and self proclaimed, "honemiester" was a nice guy, let alone a heck of a honer. Some thought that he was an abrasive, self-indulgent promoter of his own stones and commercial services. But that is another story entirely. This forum lost at least ten enthusiastic hobbyists over this guy, and that was at least ten too many.
Part of what you said is actually true. I do mind if people are led to believe that spending a lot of money is required to get good shaves. Which is not to say that I am not ready to spend premium Euros for high quality products.
However, "proselytizing" works in both directions, doesn't it? Meaning, the point could be made that you and your buddy Nelson here, for example, are obsessed with the idea of making people spend more and more. You won't hear me complain about that. Neither of you have a vested commercial interest in this hobby, so that's all kosher. I've spent the odd, and strictly unnecessary, Euro on Indian cars, Scottish booze, and German razors. Goes with the territory. And really isn't - as you well know - my point.
An interesting argument per se, but missing my point, unfortunately. Said honemiester was already selling hones back when he was still here, insulting and abusing anyone who dared question his ways. Funnily enough, once he was cut off from his Coticule supplies, Coticules suddenly became his favourite bogeyman. Honi soit qui mal y pense, or whatever that is in Russian.
But you're quite right. There are always two ways of looking at things, and that's great. Diversity creates better perspective, and I'm glad we're all able to keep and open mind and discuss things in a civil fashion although we may have differing opinions in certain niche areas of the hobby.
I've been using and collecting/reselling coticules for years. Here are my thoughts:
1) The 'collectible' Old Rock coticules are generally not worth the premium, as they're not necessarily better (and sometimes are worse) than modern coticules. Of course, they usually cost a lot more, so I don't find them worth it. The few of these old coticules that have passed through my hands have all been pretty fast - sometimes they were autoslurrying hones. This makes for a faster honing, but the edges are not always up to par. Again, not worth it.
2) Yes, it is pretty easy (for me) to get a great edge off most coticules. The various veins seem to have different characteristics, and this means that you do have to putz around and modify your technique - depending on the specific hone you have. It's a lot of fun as a hobby, but keeping track of the proper technique to use with a specific hone can be annoying (unless you keep a detailed notebook of what you do with each hone). I still have several excellent coticules, but I usually only use one of them to touch up my razor edges.
3) Can you use one stone from bevel-setting to finishing? Yes, I guess you could. I have never had the patience to stick with this. I have many hones, and I have DMT plates for bevel setting up to 8000 K. They're consistent and fast, and I use them. At that point I switch to my coticules or my Oozuku Namito Karasu.
4) Do coticules compare as finishers to my JNats, vintage Thuris, Charnleys, etc? Yes, sort of. I actually like coticule edges. I have figured out how to get excellent shaving edges from them. However, they do vary from the other hones. Of the ones listed, I have one Charnley that puts a much sharper edge on any razor than any other hone I've tried. However, I still prefer the coticule edge to it.
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Basically, I think any hobbyist straight shaver should buy and try a coticule. I'd suggest getting a La Grise or La Verte vein stone, as both these are slow and easy to learn on and they put lovely edges on a razor. The faster the coticule, the harder it is to learn to finish an edge on it. I've never had a coticule pass through my hands that COULDN'T put an excellent edge on a blade. It just took more or less time to figure it out.
As I said, I've found the varying characteristics of the coticules to be fun to learn.
They're not for everyone. People who have to hone a lot of razors are probably going to prefer to use synthetics all the way, as it's easy to standardize technique with synths. Other people are certainly going to prefer other rocks.
Coticules work for me. :)
I know who is being referred to there. I bought several razors from him and the edges were not that great - I always had to re-finish them.
I also remember his comments when the whole 'coticule debate' was going on. He basically said that he shouldn't have to modify his honing technique even slightly to hone on the coticules. It didn't seem to matter that people kept saying that that was not the proper way to approach these hones.
My interactions with him were okay. He was abrasively opinionated, but that's pretty common. The edges on his razors were sub-par, in my opinion.
I am a fan of cotis. As a bevel setter NO tried that and hurt myself. My coti likes Sheffield and doesnt do so great on TIs and the like. That said a coti is what it is. AN 8k finisher. While in the library circa 2009 that was plenty good as a finisher. Today with our hopped up race cars, and multiple master mechanics nothing short of a 16k finisher is worth squat. A BBW is good from 3K thru 8K if you learn your hone. That takes time. Science refers to this as repeatability and reproducible results. Naturals are not evenly dispersed particles over ALL areas of a specific rock. If you have a good one, cherish it and what it is, buttery smooth sharp to 8-10K max. Volkswagens can be speedy but a Ferrari never.
I think a 'good' coticule, in the hands of a 'good' honer, leave a specific type of edge, as in how it feels on the face. The same can be said for Arkansas, Thuringan, or other natural or synthetic stones. I do think a coticule is an adequate stone if the practitioner likes the feel of the edge.
For me it is a stone that follows a 1k, 4k, 8k, progression. For some it is start to finish hone, and I've tried it, didn't feel it was worth the effort, when my alternative method was more than satisfactory.
I cannot speak for Nelson, he is more than capable of speaking for himself, but I do not have 'vested interest' in what anyone buys, at any price point, I don't think Nelson does either.
I suppose that if a person is old enough to need to apply a sharp object to their face, to shave their facial hair, they are old enough to choose what they want to spend their money on. I merely share my personal experience, for better or for worse, on the products I've tried.
I think several cotis fall in the 8-10k range with some exceptional ones being finer still.
It's kind of a new boom period to buy a coti right now as ardennes is pulling a lot of cool stuff out of the ground. It was really La Grise heavy for a long time and it isn't a particularly exciting vein.
Yeah, that's not realistic. Every hone has to be honed with the way it likes. I'll mention the washita again, the ones that have strop top boxes and don't seem that fine. They'll make an excellent razor maintainer if you don't allow them to get all the way to the edge every time.
That's different than the decent hard fine jnats which will work just about any way you rub something on them.
Cotis can be a lot crankier than that, especially coarse fast cutters.
Jaspers on the far other end of the spectrum, if they aren't used with some firmness, they'll never cut anything.
I'd say that's fair. With any pressure most are much coarser, though.
One of the things I did was try an early coti with woodworking tools, where you do want the abrasive to do most of its work at full pressure because you're trying to remove substantial wear. It was immediately evident that the particles in a coti are pretty large (that was with a lagrise, I tried both sides just for giggles). I talked to a few carvers and got the same opinion, and the same from a toolmaker (from williamsburg) who had found my particular old rock hone. I can't remember if he said there was one or zero carvers/cabinetmakers, etc, using cotis in the museum (despite having a bunch of euro natives working there). He preferred spydercos (still does, I guess) and either he or someone else had the museum stocking american hone company hones for the craftsmen to use. One of the carvers there is still using a super punjab unless he retired.
At any rate, I haven't run across a woodworker that gets much satisfaction out of them because of the particle size. I couldn't. When I didn't like the lagrise I had for razors, I tried to assign it to the shop (i had a big one), but it came up short there also.
With light pressure, they cut much finer than their particle size, which is, after all, the objective with all of the natural hones - to let the surface particles get a little tired and cut shallower grooves that a leather strop greatly prefers.
Well if you'll forgive me for attempting to categorize you ........ I think you are one of those people who like to sharpen steel on stone. Razors, knives, tools ......... you enjoy the challenge of figuring out different stones. At least that is the impression I get. I'm that way to some extent, but I get frustrated more quickly than some, if things don't go my way. At that point it ain't fun. The old Wide World Of Sports intro ..... the thrill of victory, or the agony of defeat. :)
Speaking of coticules I've got a few that I haven't figured out yet. Is it me ....... or is it the stone ? I've had more than one where I thought it was a dud, but further experimentation revealed I just hadn't pushed the envelope far enough.
I don't know what the percentage is, but there are many here who want to hone their razor to maintain it, and don't care to get into all kinds of hones and honing methods. That is fine too. Different strokes, for different folks.
That's a fair assessment. I'll sharpen anything I can by hand, from razors, to scissors, to hatchets, (put a whole list of woodworking tools here), lawn mower blades.
There are some stones that are decent for one thing but bad for others. PHIG is pretty lousy for woodworking tools, but great for razors if the PHIG in question is even and doesn't release its particles. Jasper is great for engraving tools, but a bit tricky for razors. Coticule is acceptable for razors, but pretty lacking for woodworking tools. There are exceptions to everything, but there are a lot of general cases out there that are right most of the time.
A woodworker who uses the array of english hones isn't surprised to find out that washita stones cut a swath across the UK and idled a lot of slate and charnley stones of cabinetmakers when they became available there.
I don't really know why anyone who does carpentry or culinary work would go for anything other than synth solutions these days. DMTs, shapton glass stones, spyderco, etc.. I would, anyway. I use a shapton 500 for initial work on bevels because it is fast, almost impossible to clog, and leaves a nice, easy scratch pattern to work with.
There is definitely a certain virtue to synth hones, even for razors provided you stick to one system as the synth ratings overlap at times. Personally, I'm not too crazy about the feel of a synth finished edge, but if I had to, I could live with a synth progression that I finished on a trans ark to just color the edge a bit more to my liking.
I came to this (shaving) after several years of hand tool woodworking and still do a lot of hand tool woodworking...a lot.
I started on synthetics and pretty much use just oilstones now, but from time to time will use a sythetic medium stone followed by a large irregular piece of okudo suita.
A dry grinder does 95% of the metal removal on a woodworking tool, so the fact that the oilstones cut slower per stroke doesn't necessarily mean total sharpening time will be less.
I budget myself a minute to resharpen a chisel and a minute to grind (which occurs about once every 4 resharpenings). I like the edge that comes off of synthetics, but they don't have the same longevity, imperviousness to damage, ability to stay flat indefinitely without any conditioning, etc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aa0pBnph9q8
(I am not advocating that anyone watch that whole long video about sharpening a chisel, I just had to post it as a request to someone who didn't believe that you could get a working edge off of a washita stone and they wanted to know what I do - sort of akin to what was said above about sharpening certain ways with certain stones, a settled in oilstone can't operate very well just rubbing a bevel over it over and over like you can do with a very aggressive synthetic stone - the method is a bit different)
I do the bulk of my sharpening, chisels and planes, with a singe washita iron, though - similar to above. What brings a plane or chisel back to the stones is different than a razor (chisels get chipped generally and planes lose cutting clearance from abrasive/adhesive wear on wood).
there are a lot of woodworking videos out there for new woodworkers that don't advocate much skill, use of jigs, etc, and that's OK to start, but it's not very functional for a woodworker to have to get out a bunch of machinery to sharpen something and then spend 7 or 8 minutes doing it.
That's really cool. I've used chisels to break in a trans ark after lapping, but I haven't done much with washitas. I had a NO. 1 norton awhile back and some other examples. The cutting power on them calms down quite a bit with use if you don't refresh the surface. The no 1 actually cut rather fine
I don't hone a wide variety of sharp implements - just razors and knives. Being a hobbyist, I like tinkering with natural stones. I've had the Spyderco hones, but that was when I was just starting out and I think I blamed the hones for my inadequacies as a honer - so I got rid of them at the time. I still have a lot of lapping film around, and I use that occasionally and marvel at the edge it puts on, and the ease with which it cuts. When people ask me to suggest starter hones, I usually suggest lapping film, as the monetary outlay is minimal and they're easy to learn to use.
For my knives, I have never used any of my oilstones (I have a variety of Charnley, LI, etc.). Maybe it's time to branch out and use some of the oilstones on knives. I generally just use a 'vintage' combination hone I picked up in an antique store and then finish on a large bit of Asagi that I have. It works wonders.
Basically, honing is fun - and should stay that way for hobbyists. If you're not having fun with a hone, or if you lose patience with it, then stop and use something else. Everyone needs to figure out what works for themselves.
I'm not in the business of selling hones (though it may be time to cull the herd a bit), and I don't have any real preferences when it comes to hones. I keep a Charnley, a La Verte and a thuringian in the bathroom for quick touch-ups. They seem to work for me. My Oozuku (the only JNat I use on razors these days) is too heavy to use frequently.
I've had a couple of no 1s. They can be all over the place, but all of them cut quickly if you lap the surface, and they make a nice razor bevel setter. If they are left to settle in, they do a good job pre polishing and they can work as a razor hone in a pinch, but probably not for beginners.
Anyway, they make a wonderful tool stone, but few people use them because most of them are unlabeled, the labeled ones are expensive, and it's probably difficult for a beginner to get much out of them. Such is any hobby worth doing, I guess - it takes some time to develop the skill, and if it didn't, there wouldn't be much satisfaction.
Wauv you guys really love your rocks! :-) just don't let the argument get to heated.
The original title were about specific labels and other old coticules. But that is a kind of nonsense. All coticules are millions of years old. The different layers may be different, but there is also difference from stones from the same layer.
I have 6 coticules and love them all. One is extremely fast but can also finish fine. I have a greenish one that finish great but is slow.
I have a large naturel combo that will finish any razor and a very small one, that is almost brown. That one is my favourite for smiling edge razors.
All are great, all is wonderful and my hones are better then yours :-)
You guys are making me feel a little better about potentially selling my old rock coticule in the future. I don't have much reason to keep it other than that it was a gift, but it was not given with the condition to never sell it, it was given in exchange for helping someone sell a pile of frictionites on ebay and shipping them for them.
I had considered it unsaleable, but there seems to be enough guys who like that sort of thing that I think I might dump it.
If you're willing to deal with the Ebay thing (I personally hate selling on the bay) then it should sell fairly quick. Plenty of rare stone collectors out there. I still kind of cringe every time I see a boxed Escher sell for $500+
I think I paid a grand total of $300 combined for my labeled Eschers. Coti's can fetch a good price as well. Though it seems that La Lune's and Eschers dominate the rare market these days.
So when is the best time of year to buy ? I'd like to know that...... ;)
The height of summer