Could I get a loaner coticule?

[justalex]

Hey guys, I don't know if I'm asking a bit too much but I was emailing gary haywood about trying other coti's and he recommended a la verte coticule and I was wondering if I could possibly try one out if thats at all possible before maybe buying one.

I currently have a quick cutting coti, Gary mentioned it might be a Dressanti or Leslat. I know nothing of characteristics of coti's relative to their names.

any help would be greatly appreciated, Kind regards, Alex

 

[Bart]

If you can meet up with another Coticule user, it's generally easy to borrow or swap hones. But if shipment is going to be involved, it can be costly to ship stones back and forth, and you have to accept the risk, however minute, that a stone can become damaged in the mail.

On the other hand, if your desire to try another stone is inspired by the (wrong) idea that another Coticule might solve any kind of problem to achieve a great edge, I really do recommend to stick with your one stone until you've fully mastered it. A second stone will add to the learning curve, instead of short-cutting it.

I have considered the idea of a Coticule sample pack, that could be passed along by our members. But in the end I concluded the idea was to impractical.

For someone who really wants to explore Coticules, it is an interesting thought to contact Ardennes and order 4 or 5 small Coticules (30mm X 100mm or thereabouts). They're about 20EUR each, and if you're knee-deep into sharpening, it's not hard to learn the use of a smaller Coticule. It's even likely that you end up preferring them. It happened to me.

Kind regards,
Bart.

 

[justalex]

a small coti sounds a pretty good idea, especially at that price. I'm not looking to solve any of my honing problems, I'm enjoying mastering my coti alot. I've still to work out the best route to a 'coti edge' but I'll get there, it was more of a mood thing, if I felt like a certain type of coticule, maybe for certain razors or just because I wanted to.

I'll definitely look into grabbing a small coti if I can, seems like a great way to try different layers

regards Alex