Thread: Newbie with a coticule

Well thanks to my poor stropping technique I realized I was managing to dull my new razor after only about 7 shaves, so I purchased this 40x150mm coticule to touch it up. I think I've improved my stropping to bring it back somewhat but I bought this coticule stone to touch up the edge. After I bought this I did some more research and realized this is probably not the easiest thing to use, but I already have it so what the heck. It also came with a slurry stone. I drew a grid on it and lapped it and rounded the edges with my DMT course diamond stone. I drew a second grid and lapped it a second time to check that it was flat. When I get home tonight I'll try doing 30 edge leading passes like it says on coticule.be and strop it carefully. Then, we'll see how the Thanksgiving shave goes. Here goes nothing!

So the journey begins....

Well my first attempt at a touch up seems to have...made no huge difference. I tried it twice - 30 strokes on the coticule with water and then 20/60 laps on the strop. The razor may be a little better on the HHT but not by much. Anyway it's definitely no worse so I'll go for a shave in the morning!

If no better or slight improvemant i sugest making a very light misty slurry maybe 3 /4 rubs with slurry stone. then do 15 circles one way and same back up the hone repeat this 3x. then rinse blade under water and do 15 x strokes rinse blade 15 x strokes repeat twice more then do 20 x strokes on clean water strop 60 x on linen 60 x on leather ... coticule with water is very slow tint of slurry will cut a little more before finishing with water ... by rinsing blade you will being micro diluting slurry or just dip razor in a mug of water as you perform 15 x stroke dip in mug again and so forth .

If more improvement needs to be made start with a slurry and slowly decrease it until you have just water.

I've found using ALOT of water gives too inconsistent results.

try running the coticule under the tap, shake the water off and hone on what water is left on the stone.
It should be a thin film of water, that should give a better result, or at the very least give you something else to try.

happy honing
Alex

One of the most difficult things to describe is slurry, how much, thick or thin. Most think more is better, but I have had most success with Coticules with less slurry. Different razors and stones will react differently with slurry. Thinning slowly, as Gary describes is the way to go, finishing with plain water.

The other thing I have found that makes a difference is stone prep and the course DMT may be too course for a finish stone. Lap it with another stone I like a fine/ 600 DMT. If you don’t have one, try your 1K. That is the other thing the slurry stone does, refresh and finish the stone face while creating slurry.

The third thing is pressure. As you dilute the slurry decrease pressure, to where your pressure is just enough to keep the razor flat on the stone. Go slow and even.

If all these thing don’t make a difference, put some ink on the blade and do a couple of laps to see if the complete edge is making contact. If not you will need more laps with slurry or back to a bevel setter depending on what you see.

You may just want to ink up first to see where you are, if the edge is not making contact everything else doesn’t matter.

Lastly remove as many variables as possible. You honing may not be the problem. You may be damaging the edge by stropping. Try shaving with the edge off the stone, no strop, and then strop. If there is degradation of the edge post stropping, it’s your stropping not your honing. You should get a good comfortable shave off a Coticule edge.

As has been said many times… the most expensive, finest stone does not make a honer. It is all these other variables and the ability to recognize them.

It will come, with time. Good luck.

Thank you everyone for the very helpful advice. I did a light lap with the dmt fine and the coticule feels very smooth save for what seems to be some small natural ridge at one end of it, which I have a hard time lapping out because it seems to run through the stone. In any case it's only at one end of the hone so I can just avoid it. The razor felt okay this morning so I'll stick with it until my other dinged razor comes back from being honed at SRD and I have a real good benchmark to compare it to. Then if need be I'll try the suggestions above on using some slurry with the coticule.

One last question though that I have is that I also purchased a small amount of green chromium oxide paste which I was going to apply to the linen side of an Illinois razor strop that I have around. The guidance on coticule.be seemed to suggest that the paste was not appropriate after coticule touch up, so I'll save that for another time. From searching through this forum though it seemed like people can go either way on the paste after using a coticule?

Thanks again everyone for all the help and happy Thanksgiving!

I use chrom-ox on a piece of hard felt and also on canvas. It is good on leather as well. I wouldn't recommend pasting a strop, leather or linen, if it was my daily driver. A clean strop is best with a pasted alternative component IMO. The pasted strop doesn't have to be a hanger and it doesn't have to be real long. Mine are glued to wood or plastic and are 8x3" Longer is fine and a hanging pasted strop is fine if that is your preference. Nothing wrong with hitting the edge some licks on the chrom-ox after the coticule if you feel it needs a bit more attention.

http://straightrazorpalace.com/strop...-tutorial.html

Awesome dude. I just got my first coticule yesterday. 200 x 40. Put a nice edge on a 7/8 Rich Abr. Herder that had gone out of shavability.

Something I noticed, fresh coti edges are super sensitive to good stropping technique. I'll go from hht1 to hht3 from just 60 linen and 60 leather.