Thread: Coti bout standard and select differences?

I tryed some standard and selected stones and from this experience I would not buy a standard Coticule for razors again but for knifes. I had a 200x60 standard that was pretty hard, extremely fast and fine for all kind of knifes. That stone surpassed all my other razor Cotis, two strokes and the water was black and the knife super sharp. But with razors this stone was not only slow, it was like honing on glass, even with slurry. The feeling was very strange with razors, zero abrassive, the edge got not sharper, useless for razors. That was very impressive to me, superfast with knifes, dead slow with razors.
My La Petas is optically pretty similar, blue spots, extremely hard and slow. But this stone polishes the razor relatively quick to an Arkansas like sharpness after an 8k and still gives a very smooth shave. I get not even a light grey slurry with it, I could never set a bevel on this stone, but it is definitely a gem. This stone is also very slow with knifes.
I had also a medium soft stone that I believe to be a Les Petas that was very fast with razors. Dark slurry after some circles. But this stone was not as fine as my superhard Les Petas, but still got a good shaving edge. It was bought from a dealer from Austria and was marked Extra-Extra, they do not use the term selected. It was a newly bonded stone, the glue was white. Like Ardennes Coticule they recommend extra-extra (selected) for razors and standard for knifes and tools.
I had one standard bout that was moderate on slurry but extremely slow on water. It was almost the same feeling like the standard rectangle but with a minimum of life in it. It took half an hour to polish a razor to shaveready, not very easy to use with razors, but an outstanding stone for knifes and tools.

Seems to me that the newly mined Standart grade aree not propriate , or very good for razors .
Is that , so ? It is good to know so the new guys avoid this grade , and if they whant a coticule , to coose from the Select - ones .

Have three newer ones, one select direct from Ardennes which is fast and a capable finisher, two standards from third parties, one is an extremely good finisher, not very fast and the other may be too coarse for finishing, more experimentation is necessary. So from a very limited pool my opinion is formed, standard can be just as good as select. My thought is that noobs should maybe buy from sellers who have tested all stones with razors, or follow the standard advice here and begin on synthetics until they have good shaving edges and can rate a new coti themselves. My personal opinion only, probably going to order a standard direct soon as I like the looks better than select.

Originally Posted by RusenBG

Seems to me that the newly mined Standart grade aree not propriate , or very good for razors .
Is that , so ? It is good to know so the new guys avoid this grade , and if they whant a coticule , to coose from the Select - ones .

No, I do not think that all new standard Cotis are unsuitable for razors, but there is a reason why selected ones are recommended for it IMHO.
It is a natural product and every Coti I have tried has different characteristics even when they are from the same vein.
When you buy a new stone, no one did a shave test with it, impossible for natural whetstone producers I think.
I claim the easiest way to get a really good stone is to look at AC remarkable stones offer on their webpage. When there is offered a La Veinette or a La Grise for razors, you can not go wrong. But those stones are rare and more expensive. I think this is normal and quite similar to other stones. A Maruka is normally more expensive than a mate330 Nakayama with many lines and cracks.
That does not mean that an Ebay Nakayama can not be a very good stone, but the chance is higher to get a really good one with an expensive stamp. Ok, I have only two Marukas and that are outstanding stones, but it might be possible that there are some mate330 pieces that outperform some Marukas. The issue is the same, you have to test the stone and this is expensive.

So either don't buy a standard and leave them for others, or if you can't get a shaving edge from the one you got try sending it with your razor to a pro and find out if it is you or the stone. If it is the stone they will help you out. Now I have not tried the new veins so I do not know if they are different than a year or two ago. They do get the classic veins still sometimes. My guess is 98% of the time regardless of vein standard or select as long as the mine deemed it razor quality it is user error. That being said it still won't matter if a new guy gets a standard or select. Some veins are definitely more difficult to figure out than others and may be more work. I have never got a stone and then have a great edge in no time. Sometimes I have to go back to the stone a few times or even try different things till it gets there. This can be a long process of patience sometimes. I also wonder if some people just shouldn't use a coti because it just isn't their thing.

This is the best answer I have seen in many years!
~Richard

Originally Posted by rideon66

So either don't buy a standard and leave them for others, or if you can't get a shaving edge from the one you got try sending it with your razor to a pro and find out if it is you or the stone. If it is the stone they will help you out. Now I have not tried the new veins so I do not know if they are different than a year or two ago. They do get the classic veins still sometimes. My guess is 98% of the time regardless of vein standard or select as long as the mine deemed it razor quality it is user error. That being said it still won't matter if a new guy gets a standard or select. Some veins are definitely more difficult to figure out than others and may be more work. I have never got a stone and then have a great edge in no time. Sometimes I have to go back to the stone a few times or even try different things till it gets there. This can be a long process of patience sometimes. I also wonder if some people just shouldn't use a coti because it just isn't their thing.

Originally Posted by rideon66

So either don't buy a standard and leave them for others, or if you can't get a shaving edge from the one you got try sending it with your razor to a pro and find out if it is you or the stone. If it is the stone they will help you out. Now I have not tried the new veins so I do not know if they are different than a year or two ago. They do get the classic veins still sometimes. My guess is 98% of the time regardless of vein standard or select as long as the mine deemed it razor quality it is user error. That being said it still won't matter if a new guy gets a standard or select. Some veins are definitely more difficult to figure out than others and may be more work. I have never got a stone and then have a great edge in no time. Sometimes I have to go back to the stone a few times or even try different things till it gets there. This can be a long process of patience sometimes. I also wonder if some people just shouldn't use a coti because it just isn't their thing.

I'm not sure whether I agree with this or not, truth be told. I've got 3 Welsh slates, 2 Chinese hones, 2 Arkansas stones, and a Norton 8K I can get a good edge on, usually the first shot. The coticule just wouldn't give anything up without some rather intense testing and technique tweaking. Turns out mine likes mineral oil, but just a half-splash with a fairly similar amount of mineral spirit to thin it up.

Am I in the 98% that just need more practice, or the %2 that got a not so great hone for razors? Maybe this specific coticule and I are a mismatch, maybe coticules in general and I are a mismatch. Who knows?

I do know that my limited experience with one standard stone doesn't speak for all of them. Perhaps I should take it out and play while I'm working with my other stones today...

I have never tried mineral stuff on Coticules and I am afraid some stones will soak it in, sorry, but this is a terrible idea for me. Some Coticules need a good lapping to be very fine. New stones need always a good lapping. I recommend a progression up to 600w/d for most of them. Then burnishing with a bbw or a yellow coticule slurrystone. Some stones are pretty coarse with slurry, like 2k or 3k. With water they are often 10k or more. This is the greatest challange and the reason why some people say, they are best to use as final finisher. It needs a bit skill and experience, no doubt. And meanwhile, I do not exclude that there are cotis out there which are not suitable for razors. But this is normal, I think the most of the yellow coticule material that is mined is not razor grade. This is similar to Jnats. I have a Nakayama that destroys a HHT5 edge with water only with one stroke of 1/2" length to a .5k edge. No arm hair can be shaved anymore. This is a good test BTW, if your Coti does not improve your Norten 8k, then it seems not to be a razor Coti.

Well, here's the run down - when I got it, I lapped it of course with my diamond plate. Then I polished it up with 600 and 1K wet/dry. At that point, I rubbed it on my PHIG to see how fast it made a slurry - I'd say 20-25 strokes to make a milky slurry on the PHIG. So pretty quick in my estimation.

I referred to a different Cnat, a ZY razor hone, to buff it a little further. Honed a blade on a Norton 8K, edge degraded with just water. Shave lather slicking up the stone didn't really help too much.

So I set about burnishing the stone a little by running a razor that needed a touch up over it. Then I went back to the 8k and tried again. several thousand strokes to half burnish the stone later, water and shave lather had improved incrementally, but it still wasnt shaving right.

This was the point where I broke and tried oil as a last ditch effort to make the stone work. Pure mineral oil did little better than shave lather. But when I cut it with mineral spirits, I finally got an edge that could pass the shave test, if only just barely. With the right mix of oil and mineral spirits, it became a side grade to the Norton 8K. Not quite as keen, but far more comfortable/forgiving.

Tonight I polished the coticule up with a buffing wheel and chromium oxide. Same mix of oil & spirits, and the blade became an upgrade over the Norton 8K. Shaved close, clean, and comfortable in 2 passes without a hitch. The stone may soak up mineral oil, but in my case this is the only thing I've had positive results with. Using water, and even shave lather it's a knife/tool stone at best.

Wowza, very interesting. Sound like a real challange with this one.
I have a very hard vintage La Veinette that was very rough after lapping with 1.2k wet/dry and the result was bad.
Even hard slurrystones brought no improvement. I purchased some 2k wet/dry and it was a little better. After many hundred laps with a razor it is pretty smooth now and very fine.
I have an other even harder stone that was very different. After the .8k wet/dry it was like glass. No honing effect, no edge improvement, a dead stone with or without slurry. I lapped this one with a coarse diamond plate (about 300grit) and smoothed it with a hard slurrystone. Then it was a fast stone with slurry and a good polisher.
It needs many tiny hollow spaces under the blade, scratches so to say. It was like an LesLat from the hardness but there was a creamy or oily honing feeling when lapped with 0.8k or higher. Really like an oiled glass plate, very strange.
How behaves your stone while honing? Is there a smooth or a coarse sharpening feeling?
Sorry, what is a PHIG?