Originally Posted by
dylandog
Yes I guess so.:)
I've only ever had 5 or 6 coticules. The softest was my hands-down favorite and I sold off most of the others.
Until I read this thread I'd have just called it soft. Put it this way it took me about ten minutes to lap and chamfer. But you can't quite scratch it with a fingernail, and it doesn't quickly yield a slurry when you're honing with just water, so I guess it's not soft by this measure.
Coticule threads lately have emphasized their ability to cut bevels when you use heavy slurry, and their ability to polish but not cut when they're hard and used with just water. It's even been suggested that they're not very good for the in-between – i.e. that they're too slow to really sharpen effectively (as opposed to polish and smooth) with just water, and meanwhile slurry is dulling. I've even read about going to a different hone to get the edge back on, then polishing it on coticule without slurry.
All well and good, but for me this is where the "moderately soft" – okay, okay, medium:D – coticule really shines. This one is my main man. My most versatile hone. Any amount of dulling short of bevel re-creation and this thing makes short work of putting the edge back on. And with no slurry at all and very light passes it's a highly effective polisher. Perhaps a very hard coticule would be an even finer finisher, but I'm not yet convinced of this.