Thread: €10 coticule

I got lucky on the local flea bay, found this natural combo of 3x15 cm or so on a piece of wood. Heavily dished and pretty dirty, as you can see here where I started cleaning from the top:




After cleaning:


Dished:


I had some bad luck, because there was a crack and the glue between the hone and the wood let go. Or so I thought. Turned out to have another piece of BBW underneath! I glued the pieces back together and will continue lapping it until it is completely flat. I intend to use it as a finisher, so I have no problem with the very thin layer of coticule left, nor the darker spot where the BBW underlayer is almost surfacing.

Does anyone know more of this type of coticule? Anything I should do to help identifying it? I know very little of them.

When you see people identify a coticule by the vein it came out of this is referring to lately harvested stones from Ardennes Coticule. Each of the coticule companies gave various veins nicknames to facilitate knowing where their people were working. Since Ardennes is, AFAIK, the only quarry still mining coticules , those vintage pieces mined by companies many years ago, are not identifiable by which vein they came out of. Those nicknames are lost in time unless someone comes up with old factory records.

The only exceptions being the Old Rock and Deep Rock which were labeled as such. Whether those were actually 'all' out of the named veins, or were generically so identified no matter which vein they came out of is unknown to me. Good luck with your new/old coticule. Hope it turns out to be useful as a finisher.

Great find! I love these stones. I'm not sure of the type, thou. There are many experts on coticule out there. The most important thing is that it's a great hone.