Thread: First time using a coticule

If you use your coticule as a finishing stone, then just water will work perfectly fine, and cut around the 12k mark. If you use a slurry on your coticule, depending on the individual stone, that the grit goes to around 6k-8k and is really no longer a finishing stone, but a pre-finishing stone.

Best of luck, and keep at it...that's the only way we all learn.

Mark

Yes, you can make a slurry by sharpening a kitchen knife on your waterstone. It's faster and easier with a slurry stone. Question: are you using any magnification to see what the edge is looking like from heel to toe on both sides? Do that first, then do 20 laps on the coticule and see what the difference is. If you're honing for an hour and a half on ANY stone, you're using too fine a stone. Drop back to a coarser grit and progress up to the finishing hone. Think of honing as a progressive process. You progress from coarser to finer. Keep at it!

Many people use the coticule as a finishing stone: a hone used to smooth out the scratch pattern of an already very sharp edge. This adds smoothness and comfort to a shave.
If used in that fashion, the coticule needs to be used without slurry. In that mode it is too slow to do anything more for your razor, that obviously is dull.
It's easier to go to a coarser hone, such as the Norton 4K, or the DMT1200 to make the edge sharp again, before finalizing it on your coticule, but, if you take the time to master it, a decent coticule can also be used to do the work of a coarse hone.
For that, a slurry needs to be raised. The best way to do this, is with another small piece of coticule, but it can also be done with a piece of sand paper. The grit is not all that important, something between 80 and 300. Use fresh sandpaper and low pressure, to prevent particles from the sandpaper to break loose into your slurry. For that reason it's best to not use yellow sandpaper. If a stray particle from the sandpaper gets into the mixture it's easy to spot and to remove. Just moisten the stone and swirl with the sandpaper till you get a milky substance. Don't make it any denser than that. Add a drop of water if it becomes thicker during honing.
The coticule is a magnitude faster in this mode. THE BIG DOWNSIDE is that the slurry, although it removes steel rapidly, also prevents the edge from becoming wicked sharp. It still leaves an edge that will shave, but only barely.
THE BIG CHALLENGE is to bridge the gap between the coticule in slurry mode and the coticule in water mode. The coticule in water mode is too slow to refine the edge of the coticule in slurry mode. You need to dilute the slurry very gradually while honing, testing often with the TPT to gauge for growing keenness. It really takes feel and experience to learn, and also... a good coticule. I have several coticules, and while the differences between them for finishing are not very apparent, their behavior for the method I described above varies a lot.

Originally Posted by Howard

. If you're honing for an hour and a half on ANY stone, you're using too fine a stone.

Not nessacarily, if you are honeing chips out of the blade, and are using the fastest cutting stone you have, I could see that.

Originally Posted by PonderingTurtle

Not nessacarily, if you are honeing chips out of the blade, and are using the fastest cutting stone you have, I could see that.

You'd mean if your were using your slowest cutting stone you could see spending an hour and a half on one stone, don't you?

Chris L

Originally Posted by Chris L

You'd mean if your were using your slowest cutting stone you could see spending an hour and a half on one stone, don't you?

Chris L

Depends on the size of the chips in the blade. I worked for an hour on a kitchen knife and still need more work to get the chips out of the edge.

The D8C I ordered should help with that though.

I was not finding the norton 220 particularly fast cutting then.