Thread: The other side of the coti

SO does anyone hone on the BBW side of the coticule?
I'm trying to find some info to learn more about Belgian Blue but not getting anything detailed enough and not really seeing anyone on the site raving about it.

I've used it on a few razors, as a slurry, works well for some aspects as a frangible and I like it for small pocket knife blades, wish I had a big slab of BBW to play with.

I use it most of the time when I finish with the coticule,,, I use it after the 4K Norton,, skip the 8K ,,,then finish with the coticule.

Yeah the BBW ;-) sometimes they are quite good, sometimes they are not that good usable. So its made by nature and the quality depends on the composition of the stone.....

If youre lucky, you might find a stone backed with a piece of Lorraine Rouge layer, which is a very capable stone. More can be found here:

http://straightrazorpalace.com/hones...wetzstein.html

Concerning plain BBW you can read some more here:

http://www.coticule.be/the-cafeteria/topic/1452.html

Also read Henks Grinding and Honing Part 4 on belgian whestones:

http://bosq.home.xs4all.nl/info%2020...whetstones.pdf

I love the BBW, the diversity in appearance is very interesting and highly appealing to my eyes.

I've got around 20 or so and they are mostly different looking, a couple ones are from the same vein, and most of mine are natural combo stones; very nice looking stones, I dig their appearance more than the coticules or anything else for that matter.

I also got one from ardennes coticule a while ago, it's a very big hone and has been a main workhorse and it took a permanent spot in my honing routine.

I use mine mostly on slurry to reach maximum keenness, after the coti with slurry and before the coti with just water.
Works very well, it's become part of my routine and gets me excellent results.
It's basically this method: http://www.coticule.be/progressive-honing-method.html

Originally Posted by Hirlau

I use it most of the time when I finish with the coticule,,, I use it after the 4K Norton,, skip the 8K ,,,then finish with the coticule.

Hirlau, how do you like to use yours? Just water or with slurry?

Originally Posted by TristanLudlow

I use mine mostly on slurry to reach maximum keenness, after the coti with slurry and before the coti with just water.
Works very well, it's become part of my routine and gets me excellent results.
It's basically this method: http://www.coticule.be/progressive-honing-method.html

Interesting !! Always a bit more to learn, never saw the method, though i read quite often on the boards...going to try this method either with a BBW and with a Lorraine Rouge...will post my findings here then....

Thanks for pointing me to this Jasper !!

Bbw is all over the place. Some can be good, others almost useless. Salm is a different animal altogether. Bbw hit rate seems higher on glued vintage combos than natural combos in general. I have a habit of testing the bbw first on any new coti I get. One thing I will say is that it is fantastic with knives

I think you may want to read this report here: "Operation True Blue". Well planned, well researched, and well documented. Unfortunately, the only such report available as far as I know.

I had three hones with BBW side (combos) and two BBWs, and never really found much favor in them. Mostly because novaculite seems to be superior if you want a slower hone (more keen, cheaper to locate, etc).

I talked to an oldtimer who gave me an unused old rock coticule in exchange for selling a whole bunch of his stuff on ebay, and he said "you can't use the labeled side for anything, it's no good" (that was the blue side).

I chalk the fact that you can use the blue to good effect if you have to up to the same thought pattern that we can use all kinds of things (owyhee jasper is the finest natural stone I've ever seen, but we don't use it for much - it can super finish a razor if you want it to), but that we're hobbying. The former professional users of the stones didn't have interest in that, and they probably came to their conclusions about what was worth their time over a couple of hundred years. New abrasives not withstanding, we'd probably do better to follow their advice than experiment.

But I experiment, too, and I think everyone will out of curiosity.

Yet he felt the need to paint every inch of a bbw with crox in his YouTube video of bbw honing to throw the edge over the top.. If those were their findings, so be it, but it is incongruous with many other peoples'.... I've tried dozens at this point, I'd say around 70% were varying degrees of usable within a given range. The ones I disqualified were just hysterically slow or had inclusion weirdness. Of all the pieces I've had of normal bbw, to shave off of directly, I've only come across one. The backing of a choice Belgian stamped natural combo. Very very dark, very tight grain, good cutting power. I have one other piece that is glued to the back of an extremely hard coti from France that comes close, but not quite.