Quote Originally Posted by Tylerbrycen View Post
What is a good size coticule for a starter
Based on my own experience, I would say that a 5x15 would be a good starter size, you can make comfortable strokes and it still is pretty easy to hold the stone in your hand as you hone, as well as being in an affordable price range (bouts are cheaper, and there are some rectangular-ish ones to be had for sure). I'm not getting into the ideal starter stone discussion, just saying that it's personal preference, and you asked about a coticule, not 'what would be the best starter hone'.

I started with a fairly rectangular shaped bout of about 5x10, but noticed when honing on another natural (cretan hone) of 6x15 that the added length make for more straight-forward X-strokes. Wider enables you to more easily make circles, if that's what you wish to do, although I can make very neat circles on a 4cm wide hone.

The increase of problems with honing coticules may indeed be, to paraphrase Earcutter, more people buying them and using them without having a good idea of how to use them.

The "select versus standard grade" discussion is a bit redundant, I feel. The only current proprietor mining and selling coticules admits that there is no real difference except for visual. Another vendor of coticules with a vast honing experience says the same, although he does sell, for some reason, mainly select coticules. That means the cheaper standard grade hones perform no different than the more expensive select grade (keeping in mind that most stones do not perform identically). Business-wise that is not the smartest claim to make; people who really want to buy a coticule will buy one, and if the difference is only visual, many will choose the cheaper option.

The proprietor mining coticules classifies the hones into either category, no one else. If he says aesthetics and not performance determine this classification, it seems weird to me that one can say anything with certainty about the distinct performance of the coticules in either classification. Just my two cents.