Thread: My visit of Ardennes Coticules

Last week my wife, 2 daughters and I visited Ardennes Coticules in Belgium. The owner, Maurice Celis showed us round in the workshop: a 150 year old building he had bought in 1999. He used to be a mining engineer to the Belgian coal mines who had become unemployed when the collieries closed down.

it is an open cast slate quarry with 20 odd coticule veins. Coticules are a by product.

I bought a nice kosher quality coticule 6 x 1 13/18 size coticule that is actually a quite fast cutting stone. I like it a lot! At 60 euros not very expensive.

After that we went to the quarry itself just down the road. Amongst the rubble I picked up a few pieces of unprocessed coticule. The veins of coticule were clearly visible in the rock face.

Just wanted to let you guys know.

It looks like you had some fun. After putting your family through that keep those stones away from them so they don't use them as weapons on you! My friends are sick of me talking about razor-related issues lol.

Awesome, Kees. I'd love to go pick one up from the source one day.

Sounds like a wonderful visit. Thanks for sharing with us.

With my coticule Mr Celis gave me a slurry stone for free. AFAIK he usually charges a few euros for one. When I came home I discovered it had hard inclusions that caused scratces on the hone.
He immediatly sent me a new one of excellent quality free of charge!