Originally Posted by
English
I have only used the coticule, but I have had two of them. What I can say is that the first stone cut faster. Don't ask what happened to it, lets just say it broke into many pieces.
When I went to buy a replacement and my jaw dropped when I heard the price, I was told that for a period the Belgian mines had closed down because it had become uneconomic to mine the stone. It's quite recent that new mining equipment together with customer demand had allowed the mines to reopen and the latest stone which is from a deeper sources in the mine is naturally harder and every bit as good if not better than the older stone. He said that when the mines closed, the story went around that they couldn't find good quality stone anymore. He said that just wasn't true , it was purely an economic decision. The mines were making no money. Unfortunately when the mines reopened, the stigma that the new stones were not of such a high quality persisted. He said as a seller and user of the stones for many years and that included both new and old stones, it just wasn't true. He believed that as a general observation, the new stones which are from deeper in the mine are the best quality he has ever seen. He did say that of course with any natural product, some stones are better than others and many years ago, there was a lot more product to choose from.
This might all be rubbish information of course as it comes from one source. but the guy had been selling coticules all his life and should know what he was talking about.
So what's the difference between similar types of natural product? To some extent it must depends on the quality of the stones you are comparing. The differences to me sound so minor that one man's coticule might be better than another man's escher or vice versa. I don't think there is a definitive answer, so the search will have to go on.