Thread: In need of advice

I do not have a coticule slurry stone, but i was cleaning the garage and found an old survival knife that has a small sharpining stone in its sheath. The stone apears to be a low grit, anybodies guess would be better than mine. It is definantly more abrasive than my man made BBW/Coti combo, and its perfectly flat because it's never been used. I used it on the BBW side because i wasn't sure if it was slate or BBW and it worked quite well for raising a slurry. I was happy to see that the slurry was purple in color, because i'm new to hones/straight razors and purchased it on Ebay. Wish i could have afforded one bigger than 4" X 2", but times are tuff. Is it possible to safely use it as a slurry stone on one or both sides?

I also purchased an Otto Fromm #50 red head on Ebay, and was wandering if it is a quality razor to begin straight razor shaving with?



Thanks for the help,
Louis.

The razor is good. Once you have it shave ready it will be a fine place to start learning.

The risk with raising a slurry with a stone of a different material is that you may contaminate the slurry with particles of a coarser grit. I always use a stone of the same origin, or a diamond plate.

Thanks for the advice. I was thinking that would be the case, so I raised a light slurry on the coti side and examined it with magnifying glass and couldn't see any particles from the (dark gray) stone in the white slurry. Wish i had a microscope! Will the most minute presence of particles from the (slurry stone) be detramental to the sharpining process?

It will indeed. If you're taking an edge through a progression of stones, the last thing you want is coarser particles getting in there & buggering up your sequence.
Another thing to note is the effect of such a rough stone on the relatively smooth surface of a hone. It will probably be tearing it up to some extent.

You can get a credit card sized Dia-Sharp 325 coarse diamond plate for less than $10.00. Very handy for generating slurry on a variety of stones and less of a chance of contaminating the slurry with one grit to another.

You always want to keep your slurries the same as the host hone, like previously mentioned due to cross contamination. Especially with Coticules. These are some of the most unique hones out there....If your just starting out honing, Coticules can be a bit tricky. It takes more practice learning to use it, than it does to shave...