Razorlovestones Project / Magnification Shots of Stones

**Sebrazor** · 02-04-2016, 09:46 PM

I forgot to mention, my coticule and slurrystone are both selected.
Here are some pictures of my two Llyn Idwal. Unfortunately not lapped flat ready yet, but visually very beautiful I think. The big one seems to be super fine, very smooth surface. The small one feels slightly velvety and is a bit brighter. It looks more to the contrary from the pictures. (pic 2 small, pic 3 big). Will lap flat and test it soon. How to flatten best such extremely hard stones?
(40x)

**Sebrazor** · 02-05-2016, 11:41 AM

Got some more infos about my new Coticule.
Mrs Celis wrode to me:
"I am happy that you like the stone!
No, the vein is not La grise or La Verte, Those veins are coming from our quarry in La Preu.
In Regné we are mining Les Pétas. (much better as La Verte for razors)"
That could really be true. My sheffield shaves brilliant after this Coti and ca. 40 laps on a leather strop. Epic finisher and currently still available.
(40x)

**Sebrazor** · 02-06-2016, 10:55 PM

A nice old white-pink-yellow mikawa nagura without stamp. The seller said: "So old Mikawa nagura. They came from fukamizo miner's stone directly. And no dealers stamps. They haven't come from softer modern junk mine."

It is hard and very fine.
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**Vasilis** · 02-08-2016, 06:33 PM

Originally Posted by Sebrazor

A nice old white-pink-yellow mikawa nagura without stamp. The seller said: "So old Mikawa nagura. They came from fukamizo miner's stone directly. And no dealers stamps. They haven't come from softer modern junk mine."

It is hard and very fine.
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Fun fact, the mikawa nagura stones, botan and koma specifically, are used for swords as base stones (and of course, only the best of the best of any stone is considered "sword grade" both from its stunning performance and appearance) and not only as slurry stones, are equivalent to around 3-5k grit, and follow a stone so called kaisei, around 1-2k approximate grit in the progression. Still, these stones, or "inferior" grades of these stones, if used as slurry stones, can finish a razor. Of course, there are the tomo nagura stones, but the shave from a mikawa is very good, if the base stone is good.
It's possibly because of its friability; you don't even need a microscope to see that these stones are extremely porous, with tiny pores like solid sponges in a microscopic level. They release grit, but every particle released still has its sponge like shape, braking into even smaller particles, with the cycle repeating itself multiple times. It's a unique type of stone with such a pronounced characteristic.
As for the comment on hardness, it depends, I prefer mine to be soft as slurry stone and hard as base stone. Overall, I think soft mikawa stones would be preferred over hard ones in today's slurry stone market.

**Sebrazor** · 02-09-2016, 01:54 PM

Very nice, thanks for the information. This is my first mikawa nagura, I have ordered some more (Asano) naguras (Oozuku Asagi Tomo-Nagura, Coma, Mejiro, Tenjou, Yae-Botan), when they arrived then I can compare each other. Whether they are now harder or softer is not necessarily visible before purchase, right? Recently a Japanese has written to me, it applies the principle of hard to hard related to tomo nagura. But mikawa then probably not as you say. I have a lvl. 5.5 Oozuku and this mikawa works fine together. I find this one as hard as it raises slurry as fast as my veinette slurrystone but is much finer. I get a pasty slurry so. That made me a little surprised because it indeed looks more like soft chalk. Currently I can not say whether it is harder or softer than others coma or mejiro naguras but I will find it out soon. Interesting issue or not? Those sword grade naguras seems very rare, I've never seen one offered.

**Fikira** · 02-09-2016, 08:14 PM

Originally Posted by Fikira

I think I've also got one:

Attachment 227101

Wet:

Attachment 227102

50X:

Attachment 227103 Attachment 227104

For the record:

"Maurice Celis" ("Ardennes-coticule") wrote in a reply to my message:
"The last picture (here: the "wet" pic) gives a 100% decisive answer: it's a "Les pétas". A beautiful and fast stone!

**Sebrazor** · 02-09-2016, 09:23 PM

Congratulation, really beautiful stone. Mine looks a little different in magnification, but that is certainly normal for natural stones. Unfortunately my magnifying glass does not seem to have 40x, although it is marked so.
My stone is not very fast, but I like that. The discription on coticule.be (the coticule vault, bout No 102) matches exactly with my stone. I have minimal autoslurry (can barely seen) and slowly with water (almost glassy, but pleasant). Very good polisher.

**Sebrazor** · 02-12-2016, 08:29 PM

Short addendum: I was wrong, no autoslurry. After the 1200 w/d, I could see little slurry for a long time in the water with a flashlight, when it went on the steel with fast strokes. Meanwhile not anymore.
Interesting, these blue-grey areas seems to be a little softer then the yellow areas. I tested it with a "scratch test" with a needle. It is not hard quartz I think.