Thread: Question About Belgian blue/ Coticule

Hey guys,

this may sound stupid but I'm getting a combination stone with slurry sometime this week and I was wondering what side of the slurry stone to use on the hone?

I've never seen a slurry stone so I have no idea at all

If youve got a slurry stone to match your combo I think the best thing to do would be to use the blue side of the slurry stone on the blue side of the hone, and the same goes for the yellow.

Most slurry stones are natural; if it's not a combo, then you can use any side. Good idea to lap the surface you intend to use; if it's rough you scratch your main stone up unnecessarily.

If it's a combo slurry stone (I have a blue/yellow Belgian slurry stone for example) then you just use the side that corresponds to your honing stone, blue on blue and yellow on yellow.

yes both slurry and main stones are combination
so yellow slurry on the coticule side?
should i lap the slurry as well
what grit sandpaper would recommend?
how do you round theedges and corners properly?
should i do that before i lap or after?

thanks!

Yes, yellow on yellow, blue on blue.

Grits: if the stone has chips or cupping, start with something coarse, say 400 or so, until you get it flat. If it's pretty close to flat to begin with, I'd say just start and stay with 1000 grit. That's plenty fine enough to finish with as well, though some guys like to go higher.

Use pencil grids on the stone's surface to know that you've got it flat. Draw a pencil grid, lap til it's disappeared, then draw another and hopefully it will disappear quickly.

Round the edges and corners after you've flattened the surface. You can do this by holding the stone in one hand and making sweeping movements to sand the edge; if you vary the angle of the edge being sanded you'll round it (instead of creating a flat bevel). A rounded edge is better than a beveled one in my opinion; more forgiving. Do this with each edge. As for the corners, that's simple enough; just use common sense. One swipe on each corner is usually enough.

The point of all this is simply to have a flat honing surface with no sharp edges that you could chip a razor on if your stroke got a little sloppy.

I don't know what you mean exactly by "lap the slurry," but no, you don't do that. Slurry is just the milky abrasive substance that the stone yields when you're lapping it or honing on it.

My first two hones were a small blue and small yellow. I used the blue on the yellow to create slurry. It worked fine.

Well I just found out that the slurry stone I will be getting only has a yellow coticule side on it and no blue side.

What would you guys recommend for raising a slurry on the blue side then?

would sandpaper work?

All I have apart from the BB/Yellow is a barber hone so

Dups,

If the slurry you raise with the "cotigura" ends up purplish, I suspect it will be just fine. From what I understand, you need to break and shave some garnets loose by abrading the hone with a smaller chunk of abrasive material. This resultant slurry propbably won't care if the chunks of garnet (and they will be chunks of various size and shape) are donated by the yellow or the blue or both. To select the size of slurry abrasive particles you're going to need some super magnification and some really tiny tweezers - so I'd just go with what you get and appreciate the effects of slurry enhanced sharpening.

good luck, good honing,

Originally Posted by Dups

What would you guys recommend for raising a slurry on the blue side then?

Rub a coarser grit stone against the blue. In my case, I rub a DMT 1200 against by BBW and it produces a nice purple slurry.

To raise a slurry, I use:

1. A yellow slurry stone

2. rub two yellows together ( I like to do this with my vintage yellow -whch is a fast cutter- and my "green" coticule -which is a great finisher)

3, rub two BBW's together.

4. Use my Chinese 12k slurry stone

5. Use a DMT

To round the edges, I use the same technique as lapping, but on the edges. I kinda roll the stone from nearly flat to nearly vertical, if that makes sense.