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Coticule love... show off your rock

The first two on the top row are a Washita and an old Turkish; would be good for SRs (I assume this is 'straight razor'?) but perhaps not as finishers, ditto an unpictured old Norton hard/trans I have. The 7th stone on the top row is a Maruoyama Shiro Suita that would probably be good if worked without too much slurry. The coticule for sure. And also the 4th stone on the top row is a very dense slate type stone, I think probably a Thuringian, which is very fine but also surprisingly quick - that'd be great for them too.

Got any closer pictures of your possible turkey stone or thuringian - folks here can help confirm/deny. Especially sides and saw marks on the thuri. Your turkey stone looks more like a black ark in that pic but it is not very focused.

Washitas are not great razors stones….but they can be used for early stage work. My opinion is that they don’t make the best bevel. Your hard/trans however, tend to be excellent razor finishers. Turkey stones are also navaculite like arks and some can be razor stones while others maybe more suited for knives.

As you know, knives and razors are just different beasts on stones. Pressures, steels, angles, methods etc etc. What’s good for razors is not always great for knives and vice versa. I have coticules I use with knives that are rubbish with razors and my best razor coticules would be poor choice for knives. My knife cotis are not good for all my knives either, they just don’t perform well with much hardness. But the right carbon steel knife on a coticule can make a crazy sharp knife for sure and quickly. I don’t want to get on a knife tangent as this is the wrong place for that, but want to reiterate that razor-stone info does not completely equate to knife-stone work.
That said, if you are here for stones then you might want to check out Henk Boz “Griniding and Honing” - good stuff.
 
Got any closer pictures of your possible turkey stone or thuringian - folks here can help confirm/deny. Especially sides and saw marks on the thuri. Your turkey stone looks more like a black ark in that pic but it is not very focused.

Washitas are not great razors stones….but they can be used for early stage work. My opinion is that they don’t make the best bevel. Your hard/trans however, tend to be excellent razor finishers. Turkey stones are also navaculite like arks and some can be razor stones while others maybe more suited for knives.

As you know, knives and razors are just different beasts on stones. Pressures, steels, angles, methods etc etc. What’s good for razors is not always great for knives and vice versa. I have coticules I use with knives that are rubbish with razors and my best razor coticules would be poor choice for knives. My knife cotis are not good for all my knives either, they just don’t perform well with much hardness. But the right carbon steel knife on a coticule can make a crazy sharp knife for sure and quickly. I don’t want to get on a knife tangent as this is the wrong place for that, but want to reiterate that razor-stone info does not completely equate to knife-stone work.
That said, if you are here for stones then you might want to check out Henk Boz “Griniding and Honing” - good stuff.

Indeed! Most of my stones are for knives, and it's probably only the Coticule and possible Thuringian that might be suitable for finishing razors. The Turkish and my two Washitas would be more for earlier stuff, I imagine.

And yeah it was a slightly grainy night-time picture! Funnily enough when I bought the Turkey, dusty and grimy in a rural salvage shop, I did so because I thought it might be a Black Ark, but when cleaned up it's definitely an old 'Turkish' stone.

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The possible Thuringian I'm less sure about, especially as I've never handled any other one. A lot of the way it behaves (and indeed smells) ties in with what I've read about them, but it doesn't have the typical Thuri saw marks. I lapped the sides a bit before I took the pic below, but I'm pretty sure it didn't before either:

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(Feel free to reply with any thoughts via DM if you fancy. I feel like I'm derailing the Coticule thread a bit!)
 
It's been a while, I don't run into cotis that often and don't really seek them out. This one seemed neat and wasn't so dear that it was a big risk so I thought I'd take the time as I don't think I've yet experienced a really good one (or a really bad one), just the decent ones that give a nice edge that's not quite sharp enough but ...nice. Lapped it (reluctantly, there was a lot of fine stone to remove but I don't want to convex my edges so I kinda had to right?), haven't tried it yet, but it's pretty interesting indeed! It has notably pink areas (extra more garnets? faster? but maybe also less fine?) and a bit of a funky patch like the echo of a Les Lat. Of course each stone is its own thing, but I wonder what sorts of impression you more experienced types have of this?

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It's been a while, I don't run into cotis that often and don't really seek them out. This one seemed neat and wasn't so dear that it was a big risk so I thought I'd take the time as I don't think I've yet experienced a really good one (or a really bad one), just the decent ones that give a nice edge that's not quite sharp enough but ...nice. Lapped it (reluctantly, there was a lot of fine stone to remove but I don't want to convex my edges so I kinda had to right?), haven't tried it yet, but it's pretty interesting indeed! It has notably pink areas (extra more garnets? faster? but maybe also less fine?) and a bit of a funky patch like the echo of a Les Lat. Of course each stone is its own thing, but I wonder what sorts of impression you more experienced types have of this?

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Looks good! Good thing you have a lot of yellow left to do that.
I often wonder why people don't keep stones even reasonably flat before they get like that.
Pink in Coti's many times means that it is a quicker cutter but not always.
 

timwcic

"Look what I found"
This is one of those stones, that as soon as you pick it up you know it’s going to be something good. From the market sitting alone, all covered in funk and grease. When I first picked it up, it felt like a hunk of lead. A vintage, possibly deep rock natural combo, graciously large, heavy, old school thick, measuring in at 5 3/4 x 2 5/8 x 1 3/16 and weighs 840 grams. Lost some thickness lapping out divots, but a nice hard stone appeared out from the gunk. Tamed the diamond agitated garnets with a few slurry treatments. Coticule is fast and feels like you're honing on velvet. Very smooth super keen Coti edge were all looking for

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This is one of those stones, that as soon as you pick it up you know it’s going to be something good. From the market sitting alone, all covered in funk and grease. When I first picked it up, it felt like a hunk of lead. A vintage, possibly deep rock natural combo, graciously large, heavy, old school thick, measuring in at 5 3/4 x 2 5/8 x 1 3/16 and weighs 840 grams. Lost some thickness lapping out divots, but a nice hard stone appeared out from the gunk. Tamed the diamond agitated garnets with a few slurry treatments. Coticule is fast and feels like you're honing on velvet. Very smooth super keen Coti edge were all looking for

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I’ve had a few stones with an orange / reddish sublayer and all of them have been top end finishers, hard fast and fine.
I’d love a barbers hone sized one like this!
 
So I just picked up a 'Vintage Two-Tone Axe Sharpening Stone' on Aussie ebay:
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And then if one had the patience to scroll through 5 or 6 pictures like this:
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You eventually got to...
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:)

And it seems I was the only person with the patience, as I got it for the starting price of $35 Aus delivered, which I was pretty happy about. Stone itself looks to be about 180 x 45mm, though it's kinda hard to tell as they only gave the dimensions of the box.

I don't have it yet, but I do have a question... at one point the coticule layer gets quite thin, down to about 5mm I guess, because of the dishing. You can see the beginning of the dishing in the last picture here. Do I just flatten the stone and lose quite a significant wedge of coti from the end at the left of the picture? I can't think of much other alternative, apart from trying to using just the ends when sharpening to flatten it over time maybe...
 

Legion

Staff member
So I just picked up a 'Vintage Two-Tone Axe Sharpening Stone' on Aussie ebay:
View attachment 1295000
And then if one had the patience to scroll through 5 or 6 pictures like this:
View attachment 1294999
View attachment 1294997
You eventually got to...
View attachment 1294998

:)

And it seems I was the only person with the patience, as I got it for the starting price of $35 Aus delivered, which I was pretty happy about. Stone itself looks to be about 180 x 45mm, though it's kinda hard to tell as they only gave the dimensions of the box.

I don't have it yet, but I do have a question... at one point the coticule layer gets quite thin, down to about 5mm I guess, because of the dishing. You can see the beginning of the dishing in the last picture here. Do I just flatten the stone and lose quite a significant wedge of coti from the end at the left of the picture? I can't think of much other alternative, apart from trying to using just the ends when sharpening to flatten it over time maybe...
Hard to tell from the pics, but if the thinnest part is 5mm that is plenty of mileage for razors. I’d probably just flatten the whole thing until it was flush.

the last one I did, the thin part in the middle was closer to 3mm, and the ends were about 9mm. I elected to cut the ends off for slurry stones, and flattened the middle, which was still close to barber hone size.

In hindsight I would probably have just cut off one end for slurry, have a bit longer main hone, and flushed the rest away to make it flat.
 
So I just picked up a 'Vintage Two-Tone Axe Sharpening Stone' on Aussie ebay:
View attachment 1295000
And then if one had the patience to scroll through 5 or 6 pictures like this:
View attachment 1294999
View attachment 1294997
You eventually got to...
View attachment 1294998

:)

And it seems I was the only person with the patience, as I got it for the starting price of $35 Aus delivered, which I was pretty happy about. Stone itself looks to be about 180 x 45mm, though it's kinda hard to tell as they only gave the dimensions of the box.

I don't have it yet, but I do have a question... at one point the coticule layer gets quite thin, down to about 5mm I guess, because of the dishing. You can see the beginning of the dishing in the last picture here. Do I just flatten the stone and lose quite a significant wedge of coti from the end at the left of the picture? I can't think of much other alternative, apart from trying to using just the ends when sharpening to flatten it over time maybe...

I saw that one, you are lucky shipping to US was so high! Congratulations
 
Hard to tell from the pics, but if the thinnest part is 5mm that is plenty of mileage for razors. I’d probably just flatten the whole thing until it was flush.

the last one I did, the thin part in the middle was closer to 3mm, and the ends were about 9mm. I elected to cut the ends off for slurry stones, and flattened the middle, which was still close to barber hone size.

In hindsight I would probably have just cut off one end for slurry, have a bit longer main hone, and flushed the rest away to make it flat.

Yeah there were only a couple of pics that showed what it actually was, the rest all just looked like 'generic-grubby-grey-whetstone'. I'll have look at it when I actually have in my hands - if it is very thin then it might be an idea to cut off one end.


I saw that one, you are lucky shipping to US was so high! Congratulations

Haha... I clearly wasn't the only person to go through all the pics then! Well thank you for not outbidding me - I got it for the starting price and then ebay decided to give me a $5 discount :). At least you know it'll be going to a good home!
 
Just in from the mine. This is by far my smallest rock to date. As I get better at honing I’m starting to get more comfortable with the smaller stones. Even preferring a slightly narrower width. I think this one will pair nicely with my Thiers Issard. Might start practicing hand held honing.

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When it rains it pours... Just after getting the cheap ebay stone I posted above, I then found this lot of 7 old stones for an absolute song, don't have delivered yet but I'm already quite excited:

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Three nice enough size cotis, the grey one next to them looks like some kind of barber's stone, the brown one is a Franz Swaty 'two-line'. Dunno about the two smaller ones on the right yet

(I'm sure some people here will wonder how any man can live with a mere five coticules, but I don't think I really need that many tbh. These were just too good a price to pass on, so will probably offer a couple up for trade once I have them lapped, measured, and checked all good :))
 
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