What's new

BBW as a one-hone?

Some of the vintage coticules I've found, where heavily dished on the BWW side, and almost intact on the yellow side. Makes me wonder if the owners didn't know better, or they indeed know better...

On French forums there are some mentions of good shaves with the BWW.

To me they vary a lot. Some do OK, most are slow and not very enjoyable to work with.
 
Keep in mind we also did a study several years ago on coticule.be and the old coticules with bbw GLUED on the back had a ineffective bbw side. The natural combos were better. They used useless bbw to back the glued stones.
 
Most of my coticules are vintage natural combos baked with the purple variety of BWW, salm type stone.

The only one properly blue happens to be 11 inches, and while motivated by the size I've tried a few times to hone a knife or a razor, it was prery much useless.

Probably, the BWW sold as hones, vintage or modern,are properly suited. Maybe one day they will mine again the salm layer...
 
Keep in mind we also did a study several years ago on coticule.be and the old coticules with bbw GLUED on the back had a ineffective bbw side. The natural combos were better. They used useless bbw to back the glued stones.

That study is what made me revisit the bbw in the back of the la grise.
 
I've tried a bunch of BBW. Never found one that was worth using in my experience. The only one that was even decent was a la lorraine, and it's not as good as a decent coticule... so why bother?

Can you sharpen start to finish on BBW? Sure. If you're willing to work hard enough you can sharpen start to finish on a lot of stuff... and most of it finishes better than BBW.

A lot of guys on coticule.be back in the day were saying they got edges just as good off BBW as off coti... which is so far off my results I basically stopped paying attention to those threads... because either they were convincing themselves of their hypothesis and their results were meaningless, or they had absolute miracle BBW hones that were nothing like any of the dozens I've tried and which most people would never get to experience.
 
I've tried a bunch of BBW. Never found one that was worth using in my experience. The only one that was even decent was a la lorraine, and it's not as good as a decent coticule... so why bother?

Can you sharpen start to finish on BBW? Sure. If you're willing to work hard enough you can sharpen start to finish on a lot of stuff... and most of it finishes better than BBW.

A lot of guys on coticule.be back in the day were saying they got edges just as good off BBW as off coti... which is so far off my results I basically stopped paying attention to those threads... because either they were convincing themselves of their hypothesis and their results were meaningless, or they had absolute miracle BBW hones that were nothing like any of the dozens I've tried and which most people would never get to experience.


Not a shaving edge for me either. They can be a decent midrange with a good one but then a lot of Yellow Coticules are not great shaving edges either.
Some are spectacular! Never heard of a BBW that was spectacular though.
 
I had the same question some time ago when I acquired a BBW. Like many said here you have to experiment and have a lot of patience. It can be used as a single stone but its not worth all the effort unless you really enjoying honing and have the time. They are very hard stones. Where is does add value is in the mid-range after bevel setting or refreshing a chef knife cleaning up previous scratch pattern beautifully. Harder steels/temper will have you busy for days...

I managed to get a shaving edge on a GD that was OK but only after many, many, many hours honing. The edge is very smooth and “impossible” to get weepers IMO, but YMMV. They are a lot slower than Coticules. I will continue pushing the stone on the GD and see where I end up. I have not used the stone to refresh a fading edge.

I also think beard type/toughness will make a difference, those with softer facial hairs will find BBW edges very smooth.
 
I've tried a bunch of BBW. Never found one that was worth using in my experience. The only one that was even decent was a la lorraine, and it's not as good as a decent coticule... so why bother?

Can you sharpen start to finish on BBW? Sure. If you're willing to work hard enough you can sharpen start to finish on a lot of stuff... and most of it finishes better than BBW.

A lot of guys on coticule.be back in the day were saying they got edges just as good off BBW as off coti... which is so far off my results I basically stopped paying attention to those threads... because either they were convincing themselves of their hypothesis and their results were meaningless, or they had absolute miracle BBW hones that were nothing like any of the dozens I've tried and which most people would never get to experience.

They lost me painting a bbw edge to edge with mastro livi levels of crox.

 
Oh my assumption would be that nonsense refers to considering that a BBW edge After finishing it like that. I don’t use crox and haven’t for many many years, but from what I recall typically you need about 1% of what they are using there and it will be reusable for months… So that seems quite wasteful, and certainly not a way to save money if that’s your reason for using a BBW. after finishing it like that.


Using pastes after honing has caused so much bad information to go out there. When we were still regularly having discussions over whether or not a norton 8K was a good shave, almost everyone saying it was was glossing over the fact that they would go to a pasted strop after using it. They were calling a .5 µm paste edge a norton 8k edge. It wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of the BBW proponents were doing the same.
 
Oh my assumption would be that nonsense refers to considering that a BBW edge After finishing it like that. I don’t use crox and haven’t for many many years, but from what I recall typically you need about 1% of what they are using there and it will be reusable for months… So that seems quite wasteful, and certainly not a way to save money if that’s your reason for using a BBW. after finishing it like that.


Using pastes after honing has caused so much bad information to go out there. When we were still regularly having discussions over whether or not a norton 8K was a good shave, almost everyone saying it was was glossing over the fact that they would go to a pasted strop after using it. They were calling a .5 µm paste edge a norton 8k edge. It wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of the BBW proponents were doing the same.
Thank you for putting the effort to formulate a decent response.

Sent from my CLT-L29 using Tapatalk
 
Top Bottom