Ok. I've not seen many reviews of these stones despite there seeming to be a reasonable number of them out there. I suspect because most people do two things with them.
1. Test and immediately resell... thus they don't want to let everyone know that they aren't what they think, costing them money.
2. Collect and have no concern over functionality, thus they have no reason to test/review.
I'll make it short and sweet. These aren't designed to replace belgian coticules as razor hones. There is just no way. I suspect the "Extra-Fein" means just that. It's supposed to be a suitable "Extra Fine" hone... like an India Extra Fine, or similar. Possibly with the added benefit of SOME coticule-like function due to coticule garnets being included in the mix.
The blue/black side... is coarse. REALLY coarse. 60-220grit coarse. You can slurry it and feel the grit in your fingers just like you had wore out some cheap 60-220 grit sandpaper. The surface of the stone feels like a Coarse or Medium synthetic.
The yellow side is less coarse, but still way way coarser than any coticule you'll ever encounter. It feels to the touch like a Fine India.
The good of this? The stone is pretty fast. You could surely bevel on the coarse side (though I don't see why you would choose to), or remove chips on it if you wanted to. It appears to be designed for this purpose. I'd consider it the equivalent of a coarse india in function, though much softer. The fine side can get you somewhat NEAR shaving finish. Probably around 4kish on the Norton scale. With care you MIGHT get in the 8k ballpark, but again, this isn't an ideal hone for doing that. I certainly couldn't do an ATG pass with it, but it did manage to struggle through a WTG pass.
Can it dilucot? Eh, probably? I might test that later... but frankly, I'm kind of in the "who cares" camp. My 8k DMT gets me farther than this stone does and faster... so it's not long for my collection.
How soft is it? A little pressure can raise you a thick slurry in a few strokes, so pretty soft... but not so soft the stone feels muddy or squishy under the razor. Pretty nice medium, actually. Probably if you had nothing else it'd work decently well to cover about the same area as a Norton 220/1k/4k. It'd likely take longer to do it, but it doesn't seem that far from the stone's comfort zone. I really doubt this stone was meant for razors, though. So really a better comparison might be how it compares to a Coarse/Fine combo India... again, I may actually test that later, if I decide to use it with my knives.
So, I guess this can be considered a pretty terrible review... but only because it strikes me as pretty obvious that this is NOT a stone that is meant to be a replacement Coticule (which I think almost all of us thought it was), but rather an alternative to standard synthetics that HAPPENED to be made of Coticule chaff. I think it's about time someone cleared this up.
Slurry images are all at the same magnification... ~400-500x on a typical desktop monitor. First is blue side slurry, then yellow side slurry. Final slurry pic is the slurry off one of my hardest to use and likely largest garnet sized coticules (of 50 or so).
Particle size is over 100micron diameter in the blue side slurry, over 30 microns in the yellow side slurry, and outside of a few rare ~12-15 micron exceptions, under 5 micron avg in the coticule slurry.
1. Test and immediately resell... thus they don't want to let everyone know that they aren't what they think, costing them money.
2. Collect and have no concern over functionality, thus they have no reason to test/review.
I'll make it short and sweet. These aren't designed to replace belgian coticules as razor hones. There is just no way. I suspect the "Extra-Fein" means just that. It's supposed to be a suitable "Extra Fine" hone... like an India Extra Fine, or similar. Possibly with the added benefit of SOME coticule-like function due to coticule garnets being included in the mix.
The blue/black side... is coarse. REALLY coarse. 60-220grit coarse. You can slurry it and feel the grit in your fingers just like you had wore out some cheap 60-220 grit sandpaper. The surface of the stone feels like a Coarse or Medium synthetic.
The yellow side is less coarse, but still way way coarser than any coticule you'll ever encounter. It feels to the touch like a Fine India.
The good of this? The stone is pretty fast. You could surely bevel on the coarse side (though I don't see why you would choose to), or remove chips on it if you wanted to. It appears to be designed for this purpose. I'd consider it the equivalent of a coarse india in function, though much softer. The fine side can get you somewhat NEAR shaving finish. Probably around 4kish on the Norton scale. With care you MIGHT get in the 8k ballpark, but again, this isn't an ideal hone for doing that. I certainly couldn't do an ATG pass with it, but it did manage to struggle through a WTG pass.
Can it dilucot? Eh, probably? I might test that later... but frankly, I'm kind of in the "who cares" camp. My 8k DMT gets me farther than this stone does and faster... so it's not long for my collection.
How soft is it? A little pressure can raise you a thick slurry in a few strokes, so pretty soft... but not so soft the stone feels muddy or squishy under the razor. Pretty nice medium, actually. Probably if you had nothing else it'd work decently well to cover about the same area as a Norton 220/1k/4k. It'd likely take longer to do it, but it doesn't seem that far from the stone's comfort zone. I really doubt this stone was meant for razors, though. So really a better comparison might be how it compares to a Coarse/Fine combo India... again, I may actually test that later, if I decide to use it with my knives.
So, I guess this can be considered a pretty terrible review... but only because it strikes me as pretty obvious that this is NOT a stone that is meant to be a replacement Coticule (which I think almost all of us thought it was), but rather an alternative to standard synthetics that HAPPENED to be made of Coticule chaff. I think it's about time someone cleared this up.
Slurry images are all at the same magnification... ~400-500x on a typical desktop monitor. First is blue side slurry, then yellow side slurry. Final slurry pic is the slurry off one of my hardest to use and likely largest garnet sized coticules (of 50 or so).
Particle size is over 100micron diameter in the blue side slurry, over 30 microns in the yellow side slurry, and outside of a few rare ~12-15 micron exceptions, under 5 micron avg in the coticule slurry.
