Thread: Is a Coticule base slate or belgin blue water stone

a sharpening test won´t tell you much. Make a picture and show it to us.
Lap the surface and look at the colour of the slurry, this should indicate what it is. If it´s a BBW it must be purple.
Put the slurry on a white sheet of paper towel,
this is the best to see the colour

Originally Posted by Lesslemming

a sharpening test won´t tell you much. Make a picture and show it to us.
Lap the surface and look at the colour of the slurry, this should indicate what it is. If it´s a BBW it must be purple.
Put the slurry on a white sheet of paper towel,
this is the best to see the colour

First a picture of the stone.
The rubbing stone is much newer....

Here's a link to some pictures of a combination.

Rest assured. That's a Belgian Blue Whetstone. Not slate.

kind regards,
Bart.

Originally Posted by Bart

Rest assured. That's a Belgian Blue Whetstone. Not slate.

kind regards,
Bart.

Wow I got lucky 30 years ago. The guy just sold me
a "barber" hone. I lost the light for today but I will get back
and add one image of the yellow side to fill out the discussion.

I have been using the yellow side without a slurry for years.

If you want to tell if its slate for sure here is what you do. Get a nice broad chisel and wack it on it's side hard. Slate has perfect cleavage and you'll have two perfectly flat sections. If it all just breaks and crumbles you know its not slate and the coticule part? Oh well that's expendable in the test.

See? hasn't that been helpful?

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

If you want to tell if its slate for sure here is what you do. Get a nice broad chisel and wack it on it's side hard. Slate has perfect cleavage and you'll have two perfectly flat sections. If it all just breaks and crumbles you know its not slate and the coticule part? Oh well that's expendable in the test.

See? hasn't that been helpful?

Har and indeed, har.

Originally Posted by niftyshaving

.....
I lost the light for today but I will get back
and add one image of the yellow side to fill out the discussion.
.....

Here it is.... hard stuff to take a good pix of.



I am hunting a big wide brick chisel to
give it the final test. (not)....

Originally Posted by Lesslemming

a sharpening test won´t tell you much. Make a picture and show it to us.
Lap the surface and look at the colour of the slurry, this should indicate what it is. If it´s a BBW it must be purple.
Put the slurry on a white sheet of paper towel,
this is the best to see the colour

Here is a pix showing the slurry from the base.
I used a small white ceramic stone to rub it as
the rubbing stone is much newer and would not
tell me which stone generated the slurry color.

The background is a neutral gray card for reference.
The color on the white ceramic and paper is nearly true. I
see that I got a bit of red reflection from the box
so the middle of the stone is not quite true.

Since I have never seen a BBW purple myself but
the slurry in daylight does clearly have a purple cast.
This is clear when compared to the photographic
gray reference card.

The stone is 5"x2.5" (12.7cm X 6.35cm).

I do have one more image that shows the texture of
the base side of my stone slightly better.

Here it is:


My goal is to learn how to tell the various products apart
as the price difference on some place like FleaBay can
be large and dark stone is dark stone.

Looks like BBW to me, nifty.