Yesterday I did my first full Coticule honing and it was a success. In the last months I’ve been very intrigued by these natural stones and the beautiful videos of Mr. Gary Haywood have truly fascinated me. Before this my honing stones were the Naniwa Super Stones. With these synthetic Japanese water-stones I could get very good keen edges, even without any further paste, powder or spray after the 12K level. My friend Alfredo (Doc226) was also kind enough to test a Naniwa edge for me and he did confirm that it was sharp and nice. What he felt on his skin was a light “synthetic burn” afterwards and while I don’t get this, I just wanted something natural to use with a smoother feel. I also must confess that I was very intrigued by the idea of using one single stone in place of a progression of different stones in different grit levels. On Doc’s advice I started (and am still continuing) a long e-mail correspondence with our friend in common David (Obiwan), who is a huge expert and fan of Coticules (as most of you already know Alfredo has a certain love for JNATS…
. I really have to publicly thank David for all his great suggestions, help and patience with my many questions. So, about two weeks ago, I got a selected La Grise 175 x 50 mm with slurry stone and box, directly from Ardennes. Here Maurice was very kind and he did personally hand inspect my Coti before shipping. Superb customer service from a very knowledgeable and friendly person. My stone arrived in perfect shape and all I had to do was to flatten the surface with my DMT 325 and lightly chamfer the edges. My first attempts in using it were little touch-ups on a previously honed Boker Piccadilly, which I had honed on my SS. I immediately got that nice, smooth feel and I was extremely satisfied. Yesterday was the big day and I decided to do a full honing job on a brand new Dovo Carre. First thing was to dull the edge on glass and set a new bevel with my Chosera 1K. After that I did create a slurry on my La Grise of milky consistency trying to keep in mind it did not had to be too thick or too dry, just a watery white slurry. I did work in sets of 15 half strokes and used finger drops of water for dilutions. I did about ten dilution steps and when I started to notice slurry collecting over the edge, I knew it was a good sign. After the dilutions I gave the stone a good splash of water leaving some slurry on and did another set of 15 half strokes. Then, I rinsed both stone and razor well and did my last two sets of 15 half strokes on water only. Final step was about 60 very light X strokes under running water. It was time for the HHT test and it revealed to be unbelievably good! I got an excellent HHT 3 off of the stone and HHT 4 post linen/leather stropping! The shave that I had this morning was smooth, very, very smooth. I’m in love.
P.S. Pics of my razor and stone with detail of the edge post honing.
. I really have to publicly thank David for all his great suggestions, help and patience with my many questions. So, about two weeks ago, I got a selected La Grise 175 x 50 mm with slurry stone and box, directly from Ardennes. Here Maurice was very kind and he did personally hand inspect my Coti before shipping. Superb customer service from a very knowledgeable and friendly person. My stone arrived in perfect shape and all I had to do was to flatten the surface with my DMT 325 and lightly chamfer the edges. My first attempts in using it were little touch-ups on a previously honed Boker Piccadilly, which I had honed on my SS. I immediately got that nice, smooth feel and I was extremely satisfied. Yesterday was the big day and I decided to do a full honing job on a brand new Dovo Carre. First thing was to dull the edge on glass and set a new bevel with my Chosera 1K. After that I did create a slurry on my La Grise of milky consistency trying to keep in mind it did not had to be too thick or too dry, just a watery white slurry. I did work in sets of 15 half strokes and used finger drops of water for dilutions. I did about ten dilution steps and when I started to notice slurry collecting over the edge, I knew it was a good sign. After the dilutions I gave the stone a good splash of water leaving some slurry on and did another set of 15 half strokes. Then, I rinsed both stone and razor well and did my last two sets of 15 half strokes on water only. Final step was about 60 very light X strokes under running water. It was time for the HHT test and it revealed to be unbelievably good! I got an excellent HHT 3 off of the stone and HHT 4 post linen/leather stropping! The shave that I had this morning was smooth, very, very smooth. I’m in love.P.S. Pics of my razor and stone with detail of the edge post honing.
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