Thread: my first honing experience

Well.. I've contacted the seller of my Coticule/BBW and he is certain that is is a BBW.. he even contacted Ron in of Ardenne Coticule.. so I thought I would give it a second try.. and it seems pretty good.

I took the dirlam back to the DMT and then after it passed the Girlfriend Hairtest I took a look at the bevel and started honing on the BBW with a slurry.. and it worked like a charm... gradualy the scratches from the DMT disappeared .. than I went to the Coticule...the bevel looked quite, good I think... I checked the bevel a couple of times with th TPT and it seems pretty sharp... I tried mowing the hairs on my leg but that didnt happen... shaving my leg was not a problem... Tomorow I'll strop it and give it a go..

Maarten

Very puzzling...

You said the slurry is purplish, which suggests a BBW.
But the picture just looks like slate, and it seems to have a straight glue line.
As far as I know Ardennes Coticules doesn't produce glued Coticule BBW combination hones.
They do sell natural combo's when they find yellow stones that are naturally bonded to blue, but those usually do not show a straight division line.

Older manufacturers that ceased production long time ago, used to glue yellow to blue, but the original sellers says he bought this one from Ardennes, right?

What did Rob say?

Either way, if it honed out the DMT-scratch pattern, it must be a Blue... disguised like slate on your picture...

Good luck, with the test-shave!

Bart.

Please let us know end shaving result with pictures of the edge.thank you

You confuse hell out of me

Wow, I'm sooo confused... first he's got a BBW on the one side as well as a coticle on the other, then he doesnt, and now he does? Also, why not use the BBW and THEN the coticle? Isnt the coticle finer?

Originally Posted by Cornelius

Wow, I'm sooo confused... first he's got a BBW on the one side as well as a coticle on the other, then he doesnt, and now he does? Also, why not use the BBW and THEN the coticle? Isnt the coticle finer?

Coticules garnets are in the 5 - 15 micron range. Blue garnets are in the 10 - 20 micron range.
Which one must precede the other is a good question.
At present, my opinion is the following order:

1. Coticule with slurry
2. Blue with slurry
3. Coticule with water
(4. Blue with water) ? I'm still not entirely sure about that one. Most people never use the Blue without slurry.

You might find this order confusing, because it places the blue after the yellow. I believe that's because with Belgians, the shallowness of the scratches defines the results more than their width. Garnets are unique in the way they remove steel. Comparing them with synthetic hone particles is almost impossible A Norton 8K, for instance, has particles of 3 micron. Compare this with the range of the Coticule. Sharpening is about gradually removing steel till both bevel panes meet at the thinest possible line. How you get there, doesn't really matter, but it seems clear that the more you approach the limit, the shallower the abrasive action must become. With synthetic hones, we achieve this by making the scratches smaller, which also makes them shallower. With Belgian hones, the scratches are shallow, because of the facetted shape of the roundisch garnets. I suspect that larger garnets penetrate the steel less deep, instead of deeper, due to the decreased PSI. To understand this, imagine that you would run a marble with some pressure over a block of clay. The marble would leave a trace with a certain depth. Imagin taking a bigger marble and running over the block of clay with equal pressure. The trace would be slightly wider, but the trace would be shalower. For this exact same reason farming tractors have very wide tires. This same principle applies to garnets as well.

Bart.

Well I pretty much confused myself too I guess...

I'm still not sure what went wrong in the first place.. maybe its because I worked up a slurry on the BBW with a DMT that was not broken in yet.. or just bad technique on the hone itself.. maybe some pitting around the edge..and then some other newbe mistakes...

I asked Rob from Ardennes Coticules to take a look at the pictures and he thought it was slate.. but when I explained that the color of the stone was dark purple he was pretty sure that it actualy is BBW because slate is realy black..and not dark purple.. he sugested to give it a try on a kitchen knife... I will do that but I'm pretty conviced it will be BBW.. The downside is that I didnt listen and ordered a BBW anyway...
Now I only need to learn how to hone.... I'm not sure I got all the tests right. especially the TPT and the popping of hairs gives me some trouble...I did find that the loupe works great.. you can realy see what your doing..

And I'm having fun...I realy like honing...

Maarten

During the test shave I found some parts of the razor that where sharp enough and some that were not... I should realy do the TPT on the whole edge next time.. So I think I'll just repeat the whole procedure again... but its looking good now. I could find the parts that where not sharp with the TPT so I'm learning something as well...

Maarten