Thread: Coticule chronicles

can i ask you guys where you got your corticules? are there a couple vendors, any here in the US?

i use the woodcraft 12k and love the results from it. infact i think it finishes finer then 0.5 diamond paste but ofcourse the diamond paste is very nice and easy/quick for touch ups. so there's pluses for both.

however, with another 30-40yrs of straight shaving in front of me, i reckon i can invest in a corticule if thats gonna be an even better edge. no use in not having the best experience i can have, especially when its gonna last such a long time.

thanks,
~J

The only place that I know of to buy Belgian stones in the US is from Howard at theperfectedge.com.

JScott,

I'm not sure if you'll see much improvement from a coticule over the 12K. It can't hurt to get one, though.

I'd recommend the 6x2" size from Howard.

Josh

Well, Ivo said he's able to get the HHT to work coming off his coticule, so I've been trying it out. In the last week or so I've been able to get most of my razors to pass pretty well off the coticule. I'm not sure if I'm doing something different, or if I'm just getting used to this hone.

I did recently lap my coticule with my DMT 320-grit diamond hone, which changed the way the blade feels during the stroke. I think the surface was getting a little uneven on me... Maybe that's helped.

I'm using plain water, no slurry. My test shaves with the lather-finished edge weren't very impressive. The dry finished edge seemed to work on my Dovo, which is still putting up a fight, but it was unpleasant on some other razors.

I think I'll be sticking with plain water, no slurry.

Josh

Glad to hear, Josh

Cheers
Ivo

I have coticules in stock.

Well after further experimenting, the most consistent results I've achieved have been from blue (slurry), then to the coticule wet (no slurry). Dry finishing worked well on my friodur, but hasn't produced good results on my other razors. I think i'm sticking with the coticule wet going forward. Still....I'm getting far superior results than i do with the norton.

I've arrived at pretty much the same conclusion. The dry honing is a good trick to keep in the arsenal for when nothing else seems to work.

Tonight I also tried using a very, very light slurry. I was working on that stubborn Dovo, the one that I dry honed earlier. The slurry seemed to help; it got sharper than I was getting with plain water honing on the coticule. Still not sure what the deal is with that razor....

Want to kick it up a notch? I'm getting really, really good results with mparker762's newspaper stropping trick. Give it a shot--I was skeptical until I tried it for myself.

Josh

Originally Posted by JoshEarl

The dry finished edge seemed to work on my Dovo, which is still putting up a fight, but it was unpleasant on some other razors.

I think I'll be sticking with plain water, no slurry.

Josh

Try marking the bevel with a felt tip. I found that very revealing for hard to hone razors. Put a few transverse lines on blade including the bevel at 1/2' to 3/4" apart. Allow ink to dry and do 10 laps on the hone. Now check the whether there are parts of the bevel that sill have the ink on them. Those parts have not been in touch with the hone and have therefore not gained any sharpness from your efforts. Especially if there's still some ink left at the very end of the line at the very tip of the bevel you'll know you have a rounded bevel at that spot. In that case you have to go back to a lower grit hone. I found this much more helpful than studying a bevel under the mike.

The permanent marker is a good one, Kees - but I always seem to forget it until I spend inordinate amount of time

Anyway, not sure if I posted this for the Coticule users here (I said sth over on B&B but probably not here):

One person at B&B claimed the coticule has a hone indicator - "when the slurry starts spilling over the edge to the spine, then the razor is done"

Well, in my experience the razor is usually far from done after the slurry starts spilling over the edge. To be precise, for a good shave feeling sharp and smooth one needs to do a number of additional light laps. Number varies for different razors, but 30 or more is not unusual (again, very light touch). YMMV

Oh, and the same person actually said the shave after the "hone indicator" thing was not optimal - I certainly believe this

Cheers
Ivo