2 vintage coti finds

[deezyrocks]

I was out looking for shave gear at some newer antique stores today and came across 2 stones that appear to be cotis! I am super stoked about them. I have been ghetting away from shaving with my straights and have been playing with de's recently but this might bring me back atleast for a little bit. The one with a box says rose rock belgian hone is 6x1.5 and the smaller one is 5x1 1/8. The rose is more of a cream color to the smaller ones more yellow. Anyone ever used a rose rock and might be able to tell me what to expect? They are both pretty flat but need a lapping. I figure this should take the stains off them aswell. Anyways I'll prolly give them a go this weekend and I'll post how it goes.

 

[deezyrocks]

Here's the rest of the pics I took.

 

[Danricgro]

Nice. Let us know how they perform!

 

[Gamma]

Nice score- congrats!

 

[jpcwon]

Very cool!!! You'll have to lap em up & take them for a test drive!!! Let us know how they perform!!

 

[deezyrocks]

I just lapped the rose rock one to get the grime off of it and get it rdy to try tomorrow and was suprised how it looks. First off it must have been taken care of decently well because it was basically flat already just a min or 2 and it was done. There's some cool almost reddish hazy streaks on one side and little grey spots that almost look like pencil lines. The smaller one is gonna take a bit longer to lap there was some uneven ware near the corners on the sides. This one after cleaning it up and lapping past the grime is much darker almost brown with alot of visible texture that you can't feel and kind of has a wood grain look. I'm super stoked! I've only ever seen a la grise up close so these look and feel way different. Hopefully I have better luck on these then the la grise I have.

 

[Brooksie967]

That "rose rock" looks like it could be the elusive synthetic coticule....

 

[deezyrocks]

Lol well that doesn't sound good. I saw something when trying to Google them from another forum saying the person had a 5x3 rose rock and couldn't get an edge from it. I hope this isn't the case. I'll find out tomorrow haha.

 

[SliceOfLife]

>Someone makes a barbers hone that has a yellow and blue side.
>People who don't know coticules use them and think they're using coticules.
>Suddenly, "FAKE COTICULES ERRRYWHERE!"
Don't buy into this panic. A few guys gambled on eBay on what they were "sure" were coticules and wouldn't admit that they made a mistake, so it had to be a great conspiracy going back many decades to make fake coticules to fool future eBay users (these tricksters were clairvoyant). I vaguely remember these threads where they were scaring every new honer with a vintage coticule into fearing that theirs were "fake".
That's a coticule. Don't worry. Believe it or not, just because something is cut exactly and lapped on all sides doesn't mean it's a synthetic.


You scored big. A boxed vintage glued coti and another vintage coti (appears glued as well) too. The glaze and sheen on the unboxed stone suggests to me it'll be a bit slower. The boxed stone looks almost unused, but that matte creamy color and the brand name USUALLY (general assumption here) means it'll be a faster stone.

 

[deezyrocks]

Thanks SliceOfLife. Yeah I couldnt wait and took a razor to the boxed stone last night and it was super fast (compared to my experience with la grise that is). After half of the first roun dof half strokes I could see swarf and I was just using a misty slurry. I am terrible at honeing so the razor I tried to hone from start to finish on that wasn't very great. I did refresh an edge on that with water then took it to the slow lagrise and that turned out great. I realized messing with it that I don't need nearly as many strokes per dilution on that. instead of doing 20 per I was doing 15 tops and it felt like I might have been overdoing it then sometimes.

 

[Brooksie967]

>Someone makes a barbers hone that has a yellow and blue side.
>People who don't know coticules use them and think they're using coticules.
>Suddenly, "FAKE COTICULES ERRRYWHERE!"
Don't buy into this panic. A few guys gambled on eBay on what they were "sure" were coticules and wouldn't admit that they made a mistake, so it had to be a great conspiracy going back many decades to make fake coticules to fool future eBay users (these tricksters were clairvoyant). I vaguely remember these threads where they were scaring every new honer with a vintage coticule into fearing that theirs were "fake".
That's a coticule. Don't worry. Believe it or not, just because something is cut exactly and lapped on all sides doesn't mean it's a synthetic.


You scored big. A boxed vintage glued coti and another vintage coti (appears glued as well) too. The glaze and sheen on the unboxed stone suggests to me it'll be a bit slower. The boxed stone looks almost unused, but that matte creamy color and the brand name USUALLY (general assumption here) means it'll be a faster stone.

And how long ago were they mounting coticules on a black base?

 

[Brooksie967]

There are actually quite a few threads around that talk about these man made coticules.
There's also a video of people using an acid test on it:

 

[SliceOfLife]

Slate? It's been around for a few million (billion?) years. Mined for about as long as human's have been mining anything. I've had some coti's on slate that were definitely not ardenne's stones, but estimating a date for them is all but impossible. Vintages are much more likely to be put on bbw since importing slates was less economically beneficial, but there are certainly some slate-mounted vintages and even some unmounted and glued-box vintages out there.

 

[deezyrocks]

Lol well I don't have any acid laying around but I compared the back of the rose rock to the slate backing of my newer coti from tss and the rose rock definitely not slate. It prolly looks black in my crappy phone pics but after looking at the pics of bbw on tss I would gheuss its that. It has a pattern in the stone kind of like a coticule. I'm not sure if that means its bbw but thats what I'd guess. I appreciate the help guys. I wanna test the smaller one too but it is a pain to lap. I dont have proper lapping tools so I'm using a shapton 1200 that I use for bevel setting lol. It's working but veeeeeeeerrrrrry slowly.

 

[SliceOfLife]

Acid test. Ahh yes. That certainly proves that a stone is synthetic.

Deezy, natural coticules can pass the acid test just fine. It tests for the presence of lime in the stone, or on the surface of the stone, and if memory serves a content well below 1% will give a pass. Out in the field you're cautioned to wash the stone before doing it because dust can cause a false positive.

The fact that the guy proposing the use of this test says that no natural stones pass it would make geologists cry.

So... yeah.

And yeah deezy, it's probably bbw on the back. From your pics we can't really tell (side views and a bit blurry make the telltale signs of bbw harder to make out), I almost said it was glued to slate in my first post, but decided that I couldn't say for sure from that angle. If you wanna post a picture of the back, we can drop all this.



But the last thing I'mma say about the "fake" coticules. Is I've owned one. It was 7x1". It was exactly like the 1" wide stone in that thread you linked (post #5), Hell it could have BEEN that stone. I've owned DOZENS of coticules. It was beyond any doubt a coticule. It was a somewhat SLOW coticule, with a slate back, but it was a coticule. I dilucotted close to a hundred razors on it.

People who don't know how to work with coticules and maybe a few guys who actually have someone vaguely coticule-looking synths started a panic about nothing and used psuedo-science to back it up. I welcome ANYONE with a "fake" coticule to send it to me for half of the "real" coticule price. Surely a simple vintage synthetic (other than 00 or axestone) isn't worth that much to them. The guys who just have 2-toned synths and made a mistake are excluded from this offer.

 

[Brooksie967]

I'm not trying to say that this is man made but from the pics posted it looked similar so I thought I would share.

 

[SliceOfLife]

Yeah, I'm not trying to attack you, but check out post #28 in that thread. I wouldn't be surprised if that guy resold that stone as "Warning, not a coticule" for way less than it was worth, because the "experts" gave him a test that "proved" it was synthetic. Now he's out money for listening to bad advice. I don't wanna see that happen to Deezy.

Coticules vary in speed. This is just how the rock is. And when you see a stone that has OBVIOUS evidence of being natural (glued stone with fractures between the mated surfaces that have no linear component indicating damage after joining, Manganese spots) and people don't correct a guy who says "Your test proved this stone is synthetic", it's pretty disgusting in my opinion.

 

[Brooksie967]

Yeah, I'm not trying to attack you, but check out post #28 in that thread. I wouldn't be surprised if that guy resold that stone as "Warning, not a coticule" for way less than it was worth, because the "experts" gave him a test that "proved" it was synthetic. Now he's out money for listening to bad advice. I don't wanna see that happen to Deezy.

Coticules vary in speed. This is just how the rock is. And when you see a stone that has OBVIOUS evidence of being natural (glued stone with fractures between the mated surfaces that have no linear component indicating damage after joining, Manganese spots) and people don't correct a guy who says "Your test proved this stone is synthetic", it's pretty disgusting in my opinion.

What gives you the impression he sold it for way less than it was worth?

OP: Can you take better pictures of the stone in natural lighting for us?

 

[SliceOfLife]

He does the test, finds it's a "Fake" and immediately asks how much it might be worth. My assumption is he's trying to cut his losses at that point. Also, think about it. Would you keep a stone that you found out was just another synthetic? How many synth barber's do you own? I've had maybe 30-50 pass through my hands and I've kept between zero and one. A more shrewd man than I would promote this "fake" stone fear so that he had less competition on eBay coticules, and people would always have this doubt about any slate-backed vintage... making them come up for sale more often. Looking at it from a purely mercenary standpoint, it's genius.

 

[Brooksie967]

I think there's a lot of assumption involved with that, but to each their own. There are, in fact, eschers made this way as well as coticules from belgium that used the sawdust from mining to create the stones. Not sure why this would make someone want to sell it.