Thread: Another plea of help (coticule)

Some time ago I traded a Filarmonica 14 for this stone. It is a natural combo, 11 x 1 5/8 inches (broadest section), have some lines in it, and I chopped off a small part of it from the shallowest extremity to use as slurry stone over my translucent arkansas pike hone. The creamish surface raises an off-white fat milk colored slury, the bottom produces a purplish slurry.
The table it rests in the photos is pure white. As I almost always do with irregular bottom-sided hones it now have a beeswax bed.
Surfing upon Mr. Stillshunter thread, my curiosity was raised. It is possible to identify from what layer this rock pertains?
If additional images are needed, please educate me how they must be taken to be useful.

I thank you in advance, gentlemen, for your opinions.

Well as we all know, layers cannot be determined for sure for the vintage coticules. Different quarries had different layer names sometimes in the past.
I personally love these old handcut natural combo coticules with different shapes.
One of my firrst coticules I got from an old butcher. Here it is:



It measures 10 x 2.5 inch. I asked Maurice Celis from Ardennes about the layer, one time, I visited him. He looked at it and did a few strokes with a knife to see, how hard and fast the stone is.
His statement then was, that this coticule is an Old Rock. And Maurice should know, beside his activities today dealing with coticules, he has also worked for a certain time in the Old Rock mine in the past. Beside the sharpening capability the special wavy lines between the Coti and the BBW backside is an indication of an old rock.

But what does this mean? Old rock was a famous quarry of coticules in the past with a lot of different layers as Ol'Preu or Regné or each other quarry. But also there was the "Old Rock" layer, which was a coticule of very good quality, mined at the old rock quarry (and maybe also mined in other quarries, since the old rock company also sold coticules from other quarries). Maurice and other experts as well as some references in older literature state, that the old rock layer is identical with the La Veinette layer - as mined nowadays in Ol'Preu and maybe sometime again in Regné.

Anyhow - I cannot tell if your stone is really an old rock. But it doesn't look very much different to the one I showed ..... At the end of the day, only the performance counts for honing. But it is always a pleasure to look at this old treasuries

I am inexplicably sad about the end being chopped off, sniff. I haven't even used a coticule before, so it is not some strange attachment.

Sorry to bring tears to your eyes WW243, but this end leaked a lot of bubbles first time I drown the rock, revealing a fracture just in the middle line. I don't like water percolating my stones, so I choose to take it out and use as slurry. Remnant stone don't take any water, and is stable now.

There's a lot of information in here, including many pictures and descriptions of the various veins:

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

Originally Posted by Matheus

Sorry to bring tears to your eyes WW243, but this end leaked a lot of bubbles first time I drown the rock, revealing a fracture just in the middle line. I don't like water percolating my stones, so I choose to take it out and use as slurry. Remnant stone don't take any water, and is stable now.

Thanks, I feel a lot better now!

Originally Posted by hatzicho

...I cannot tell if your stone is really an old rock. But it doesn't look very much different to the one I showed...

Indeed, hatzicho. Very similar. Thank you for the information you provided and for showing your beautiful rock!

And I think that every stone is different, I speak for natural stone. Quality sharpening can only be determined in practice, when the stone are using.