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- #41
How does that work? Are you able to try before you buy? Or, do you know the good ones by sight? I do know La Grise by sight, I own a lot of them. Would I buy another? No.I don't buy coticules that are hard to get good finishes on.
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My first was that vein. It was a hard schlog at first, but I learned it, and was able to learn to go from bevel set to finish on it. And, mine was (and still) is a good finishing stone. You'll get a stellar edge, if you have patience.
But, I have other examples of La Grise that don't seem to be very useful for anything. I have a big hybrid bout 10 that sticks almost immediately even on slurry, and feels very waxy.
Learning on that first La Grise gave me some bad habits when moving to faster stones. Like using too much pressure and too heavy a slurry at the start of dilucot, just in the hopes of speeding things up. I'll confess to ruining a few blades when learning by grinding down the spine while making no progress on the edge.
No luck with Les Lats either. I have a couple. I can get an edge, but would rather go with synths and finish on an Ark than that.
My LV I bought as that vein from Ardennes, and it has lived up to the hype. Would not sell it for anything
I have one I bought from a Gentleman on Etsy, with whom we are all familiar, I'm sure, that I like even better than the LV. It's very hard, but also very fine and responds very well to pressure (it will produce swarf with a little pressure and no swarf without much pressure. Don't know the vein, but it's not La Grise, not Les Lat. It looks kind of like Lv, but has markings that kind of look like faint blue bruise marks just below the surface and a few orange lines. I have a slurry stone that has the same characteristics
If I ever saw one of those again, I'd know it on sight and would buy another. That is another I would not sell.
And just to be clear--I have never sold any of the ones I didn't like. Only a square bout that was too small for my purposes, but otherwise good, and an LV hybrid slurry stone that still had the Ardennes stamp. I just had more than I need. I have a big pile of rocks collecting dust...
In short, I think that you can get most (but not all) coticules to work, but they are not all the same. Some are much better than others.
So, be careful, children...