Thread: Dutch barber's manuel

Received this 2 days ago: "Technisch handboek voor den heerenkapper" (A barber's technical manual, 1910).

I have been reading in it and found a few interesting facts in this 99 years old book.

1st it classifies coticules as oilstones; Thuringen hones are called Meiningen hones (Meiningen is a town in Thuringen) and it recommends they are used with water.

It says that until about 1880 most blades were made in England and shipped to Germany for grinding. After that English firms started importing German blades that were sold worldwide as English blades. The patriotic English government passed a law that only blades made in England were allowed to be called English blades, hoping to phase out German blades. So from then on blades made in Germany had "made in Germany" stamped on them. However this worked counter productive: "made in Germany" became a seal of high quality and dealers started ordering their blades in Germany.

According to this book the French introduced wooden paddles, leather on one side and Hamon or zeolite paste which is occasionally still offered for sale on ebay. These paddles could actually replace hones and strops. Nowadays these paddles are usually made of balsa but apparently any wood without knots would be used.

Just wanted to share.

Great info, Kees. Thanks for posting that.

Chris L

Is there anyone who tried using oil on coticules on this forum? Might be an interesting thing to try out.
Thanks for sharing the information Kees!!

Most vintage used hones have a coat of oil on them. I have one vintage natural combo coticule that took me an hour to lapp the oil off on both sides. IMHO oil is sticky and clogs up the pores with swarf. That might be less of a problem with soft hones than hard hones.