Thread: Coticule vs BBW

This was an interesting one and inspired me to try out a BBW edge. It came from a seller who purchased a few razors and three stones from an estate. The wear was pretty unique, a severe dips coupled with fairly severe radius on both long edges. Making an S shape wear pattern. The BBW also had some odd, fairly rounding, wear along one edge.

This was the only decent picture from the Ebay listing.












After some lapping, you can see it has a pretty neat mottled pattern. Honed up my Bartmann 89, which had a decent but not super keen coticule edge already. My typical baseline for what I consider the minimum for what my face and scruff need. It is from my most used stone, which is a great pre-finisher, but definitely requires a little extra oomf to put an edge just where I like it.





Started on the Coticule side, water only laps alternating between my stone holder and handholding the stone. Did about 50-60 laps each holding change. My preference for coti's vary due to size and what the characteristics of the razor requires. The stone definitely improved the edge and polished the bevel a little bit better. Had an issue during lapping where a piece of the stone flaked off, right in the brown colored portion.





I then went to the BBW side, with a few coticule streaks peaking through. It is also a much darker color that I have seen on other coti's. I did water only for about 50 laps and was slightly concerned by the feed back. Very uniform and velvety, which quickly and very impressively improved the edge further. This was quite surprising as I had very low hopes for this experiment. I haven't had much success with other BBW's before.

I was really pleased with the following shave. Had a solid week's growth to mow through, which makes my skin pretty sensitive to poor edges/lathering/technique. Thankfully it all came together with a close and comfortable shave.

I have another, even more well worn, natural combo coticule that I am fiddling with.

I find it interesting that natural Japanese stones have a rating system for hardness and keenness of edge produced, but coticules and BBWs are characterized by the layer from which they were sourced. Unless you are a real student of that, you don’t really get much information about the stone you want to purchase.

Coticule users talk about learning their stones, I think because nobody has come up with a classification system that passes information about the stones and the variation even within a layer can be significant. In my case, my combo stone was passed to me without any layer identification attributed to it and I am having to figure out (mostly by trial and error) how to max it out. My aha moment about matching stones to users was a long time arriving ;-(.

Seems to me that dedicated coticule/BBW users have to have the following characteristics: persistent, patient, stubborn, methodical, ... (add to the list).

Originally Posted by DZEC

I find it interesting that natural Japanese stones have a rating system for hardness and keenness of edge produced, but coticules and BBWs are characterized by the layer from which they were sourced. Unless you are a real student of that, you don’t really get much information about the stone you want to purchase.

I maybe wrong here but the grading system for Jnats is to distinguish which stone is suitable for things like kitchen knives, wood working tools and razors as really hard Jnats can scratch the bevels of softer kitchen knives etc.

Funny thing, tried another vintage combo Coti,

The coti side felt smoother than the bbw side this time and also shaved better/smoother than the bbw side

Both sides can work, guess you really need to figure out your Coticule/bbw

Originally Posted by TristanLudlow

Funny thing, tried another vintage combo Coti,

The coti side felt smoother than the bbw side this time and also shaved better/smoother than the bbw side

Both sides can work, guess you really need to figure out your Coticule/bbw

I wonder if it depends on how the coticule/BBW has been lapped.

Originally Posted by DZEC

...

Seems to me that dedicated coticule/BBW users have to have the following characteristics: persistent, patient, stubborn, methodical, ... (add to the list).

Absolutely agree with you!
And that is exactly what this „honing razor“ stuff makes attractive to me as a hobby!
I
For those who just want to shave best would be to go for high end man made stones or to send their razors out for honing.
I do not own high end man made stones but seems like honing up a razor on them ist just a pee nuts compared to using naturals. They are exactly classified, very fast and deliver consistent results easily achieving or even exceeding the level of naturals.

To me honing a piece of blade on a piece of rock does have something special to it. Each stone is different, each needs some experience with it, has its own quirks and defects.
Its so natural...