Thread: What is the best honing stone available?

Dear X,

You may have a coticule with some veins of Belgian blue in it. Coticule is considered to have a grit of 8-12k while Belgian blues have a grit of 4-6k.

Coticule and Belgian blue often run together in a rock. Both are presumed to be of volcanic sedimentary origin. Click on the following link and you can see what it looks like underground in the mine: http://bxl1.free.fr/coticule.htm. Scroll downward, below the French text and you will see some pictures of the inside of a coticule mine. The 7th and 8th show the veins of coticule and blue whetstone run side by side. Between the pictures it reads "Les filon de coticule...". If you want to know more about the mineral content of coticule and Belgian blues click here: http://www.belgischerbrocken.com/. Click on the Union Jack and then on "Information about the Belgian sharpening stone". If you scroll downward you will find below the order form some interesting info. on Belgian whetstones.

Apart from the differences in grit size you should take into account that te coticule wears more easily than the Belgian blue. So after using it more and more your stone will become less than perfectly flat. I am not a honemeister but I can imagine that humps on the honing surface may damage your edge.

The gist of it is that your coticule might be "adulterated" with Belgian blue. I will check my stone carefully as soon as it arrives for blue veins... Thanks for the tip-off.

Kees

There are definetly differences i the Coticule stones. Some have a distinct grain pattern in them in which a more coarse crystaline structure is seen. Most of the "Old Roc" or "exta-extra" stones as a solid, homogenous yellow with little on no grains/crystals evident.

I have gotten my best results with the more homogenous stones, other do well with the more crytstaline ones. I recently sent a very grainy looking stone to Lynn for testing and he seemed to get decent results from it.

Most natural stones have variations. The vintage Eschers I have tried all seem a little different too. Some hard, some soft with colors ranging from jet blac, to charcoal grey to a greenish/yellow tint. With any of these the underlying garnet crystals can usually be seen with a microscope.

Tony