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Coticule: The only honing stone I know!!

motero57

New Member
Hello friends.

Probably this is my first post, but I am not new to the forum. 9 Months ago more or less (I am very bad with dates) Bart gave me advise for purchasing a Coticule. In that period, I was new to Straights. I was comming from DE razors and wanted to take the challange of the Straights. I bought a Spartacus TI razor and a solingen strop. I also wanted a hone, and was deciding between naniwas, chinesse, coti, BBw.... I had no idea by then. Bart suggested me going to the coti. Glad I did it.

Now, I have 2 razors, my spartacus and a new 7/8 friodur inox. I am able to follow the new dilucot method with success. Today I honed and shaved with the new friodur and no problem, really nice shave. I am very glad I followed Bart's advices. I feel that with one one, a Coti, I am mostly able to solve all my honning necessities.

The tittle describes it well. The coti is the only hone I have, and I am glad to say that I do not need any other hone or pastes... .

I still need to learn a lot of how to properly hone the razor. I am able to pass HHT after stropping, but need to improve. For example, the part of the blade that becomes to me very difficult to hone is the point. (1 cm from the point). Most of the time, I am not able to pass HHT in this part of the blade. This gives me the idea that a lot of learning is needed and that while I learn, I will still keep in improving my honning and my shaving experience.... So, Why do I need another hone? If I do, It will probably be a second coticule :thumbup:


Thanks all and have a happy new year.

Motero57
 
I see this is your first post please so allow me to say “Welcome, welcome to our little forum my friend”, and you have done well indeed. You are one of the very few to discover this little secret.
99% of folks who decide to shave with a straight razor will only ever need one hone to maintain it.

The edge near the point can be troublesome. You can place a finger near the point and put just a little downward pressure during the stroke on both sides… or… you can do a few back-and-forth strokes concentrating on the point area on both sides until it is as sharp as the rest of the edge, then a few regular strokes to make sure all the edge is even and sharp you will be good to go.

Again, welcome my friend, a prosperous new year to you, and please let us know when you get that point sharper.:thumbup:
 
Welcome David :) ,

I know we serve a lot of people that are just reading along, but for various reasons choose not to join the conversation.
I think that's perfectly fine, but it's always nice if someone steps forward with a little thank you note, or with a question, or even with a couple of suggestions how we can improve this website.


Concerning your question about honing the tip of the razor. I second Smythe's advice. There is no real harm in doing localized work on parts of the edge that stay behind. I'm saying this with some reluctance, because that statement is only true on the one condition that an error-free honing stroke is used. Meaning: the razor stays flat on the hone at all times, without the spine lifted above the surface, and the blade never catches the edge of the hone, or other calamities.
On that condition, every part of the edge will become sharp before the blade looses width.

If you look at my BBW video (never mind the green stuff, it works but it's obsolete), you can see me doing all kind of localized strokes.

At 1'15" in the video, you see me perform a TPT. The edge turned out to be slightly behind at the middle part and even more so at the tip. That's why you see me doing halfstrokes on only the the middle+tip after the TPT, and next halfstrokes on only the tip. Next, at 1'38", you see me doing a slow X-stroke. I'm closely monitoring how the fluid runs up the edge, making sure that it does equally well on the parts that my TPT had revealed to be behind. This tells me as much as my TPT. You can clearly see in the video that it checks out, hence I continue with normal X-strokes before finishing the razor on CrO. (which isn't needed, but I didn't knew that back then).

I hope you get something out it for your slight "honing the tip" problem.

Kind regards,
Bart.
 
Bart, I've always liked your old advice to just "think" about that part of the edge that is behind when you do a rolling X stroke, even though you don't raise the spine. It is just a minute bit more pressure in that area and is done (by me, at least) by torquing the tang a bit more in that area of the stroke, after I have done localized honing. Denny
 
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