My coti... do you know her?

[bradyarz]

I'm sure you get a ton of these threads, so my apologies up front for that as well as my poor lighting: .

I was asked in my greeting thread to post pics of my coticule. Well, here she is.
First, a couple of thoughts:
-I know nothing about this particular stone, so comments are welcome.
-I don't know which layer it comes from (again, suggestions welcome)
-I was told it was not a 2-sided stone, but rather just on a slate backing. Can anyone confirm this visually? The reason I ask is I was told my slurry stone is 2-sided, and it looks remarkably similar to the backing on this stone.
-In the right light, there are small streaks of iridescent specks on the surface. I tried to capture these in a few of the pics, but only a few specks are visible. Most of these are near the dark spots. Might these be problematic?
-I took a picture of the striations on the side of the stone. Will these cause me heartache in the future?







Thanks
-Brad

 

[BlueDun]

Brad,

Thanks for sharing. The easy questions first:
I'm almost certain that this is a slate backing, therefore not meant to be used for honing purposes. However, as foto colors can be off by quite a bit you can raise a slurry. If it is purple, really purple, then it is a BBW. A slate will release a medium to light grey slurry. Really easy to tell apart.
There should not be a problem with the darker spots. This are normally just discolorations cause by manganese. Look at some of the hones in the vault. You'll see some REAL black spots. And they are beautiful! I actually do have a vintage combo that has some spots similar to yours. They are a bit bigger and cover the middle part of the coti. And I can actually feel them while honing. This part of the surface causes a significantly higher draw upon the razor. Yet, I could not find any negative effects to the edge.

The difficult part is telling the layer of your coti. Unless it's coming from the Ardennes quarry it is difficult if not impossible to determine. If anyone can help you with that it will be Sir Bart.

Cheers
BlueDun

 

[danjared]

It usually helps if you're able to take the picture outside under natural light. I know at least my photos are blurry and crappy when I don't use natural light because I don't know how to use a flash. Get some nice and crisp photos. That helps make it possible to see the patterns on the coticule as well as the color of the backing.

 

[Bart]

It's most likely a hone from Ardennes Coticule. It has the grayish glue line, typically for the tile cement they use to glue Coticule slices to their slate backing. That kind of slate indeed has no honing use.

The Coticule appears to be of the La Nouvelle Veine layer. The small blue lines that show on the side, combined with the somewhat "blotchy" surface are consistent with that layer. These are very nice Coticules, reasonable fast on slurry, but slow on water. They're usually mellow finishers. Unicot works well and so does Dilucot, but you need to handle the dilution with slow precision.

Kind regards,
Bart.

 

[bradyarz]

Thanks for all the info! I have another couple straights I just got in. Hopefully I can get to them this weekend. :thumbup: