Thread: Loving my coticule

Well I decided to have a play with my new coticule today. Bart over at Coticule.be believes it to be from "La Nouvelle Veine" and as such is a slow stone.

I went for the Unicot method in which you deliberately dull the razor then start the honing without taping the spine but once the bevel is properly set you tape it to create a micro bevel (or at least that's as I understand it).

Unfortunately being a slow stone forming the bevel was a challenge that I wasn't winning and I was starting to get rather disappointed that the slurry on my slow stone remained so light indicating that it was removing very little metal.

Eventually I gave up and set the bevel using my King Combo stone; 40 half strokes on the 1000grit side with slurry then 20 laps without slurry then 20 laps on the 6000 side with slurry then 20 on just water. I then raised a slurry on the Coti and did about 30 laps on a thick slurry, then taped and did 30 laps on a light slurry then 60ish on just water.

After stropping the HHT seemed OK and I waited to do the shave test until this evening fully expected to have to head back the the hones.

The result - WOW! I have a couple or pro-honed razors and my edge was pretty darn close. Clearly the challenge is for me to repeat this result but I was totally astounded by the smooth, sharp result. A bad workman may blame his tools but in this case I reckon the good tools made for a good job!