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Speeding up a slow La Verte

Phlier

Active Member
The Wife gave my La Verte a last minute pardon: I no longer have to sell it. In celebration, we spent the day together... No, not me and the wife, silly, me and the La Verte. :)

I've mentioned previously that I love the La Verte as a finisher, but dilucot on it is a lesson in patience. So I thought maybe I could speed it up.

I also have a very old, small Pike brand coticule that is extremely fast, but doesn't finish out well.

So I used the Pike as a slurry stone on the La Verte, and did a nice gradual dilucot from bevel set through finished blade. Shaved with it last night. Darn near spot on. I could still use a bit more keen, like I get from, um, "other" sharpening methods, but it's almost not worth sacrificing the smooth.

The Pike as a slurry stone completely altered the characteristics of the La Verte. The dilucot was fast, painless, and by the time I finished on water, I was left with the La Verte finish, which is *much* more keen that the edge left when the Pike is used as a finisher.

I'm a bit mystified by these results, as it seems like I've read in other places that the slurry stone used won't noticeably alter the characteristics of the coticule itself. Regardless, it worked, and worked well.
 
I've had the exact same experience.
I've used Le Verte slurry on my Le Verte stone, and found it to be painfully slow. Using my other slurry stone, a Le Veinette, I find that the process is sped up tremendously. I don't believe that the final result is influenced by the slurry, only in how you get there. I believe it's the water stage that lends its qualities to the shave.
When I'm working with a new stone, i find I prefer to raise slurry with my E-Z Lap, ensuring that I'm eliminating the variable brought about by using different slurry stones. When I'm just dinking around, i tend to use my Le Veinette stone as the slurry it raises seems to be a fairly nice on to work with.

I will admit also, to indulging in a progression of coticules, where I'll do heavier work with one, and finish on a different stone, either my Le Verte, or my Las Latnuesses hybrid side.
 
I've heard other people claim the same results (using a 'fast' slurry stone on a 'slow' coticule), so I believe what you're experiencing.

A lot of the studies mentioned here were done by very experienced people and the results could be skewed by the experimenters ability to get the best from their hones to start with.

Anyway, it's not really about what works for someone else.....it's about what works for you. ;) If the slurry stone makes a difference to your experience honing on your La verte, then that's you should continue doing. :thumbup:
 
yohannrjm said:
Anyway, it's not really about what works for someone else.....it's about what works for you. ;) If the slurry stone makes a difference to your experience honing on your La verte, then that's you should continue doing. :thumbup:

Agreed. I don't think it has ever been extensively tested. I ran some tests, as did Bluedun. I didn't really found differences I could quantify or qualify. If there was a speed up of a slow Coticule by using a slurry stone from a fast layer, I had the impression that it didn't last longer than the first couple of halfstroke sets. It appeared to me that speed is very much a function of the stone itself, how it is abraded by it's own slurry, which releases fresh garnets in the mixture. I tried Coticule slurry on BBWs as well, but also there could not find a clearly observable speed advantage. I've tried slurry on a ceramic tile. That didn't work too well.

But these were all brief trials, and If someone else has other experiences, that's just fine.

Kind regards,
Bart.
 
OK... I stand corrected. i just had to give this a try, and I will say that i'm a little confused now because I'd swear that in the past I felt that my Le Verte was incredibly slow with its own slurry. It was nothing I'd quantified, more of an impression and a sense than anything concrete but here's what I just tried:
Dulled my test razor, raised slurry on the Le Verte with the EZLap And and did a single set of twenty half-strokes per side, and tested for SAH. I was surprised that it did so already.
So I re-dulled it, and raised slurry with my Le Veinette slurry stone and did another identical set. Same result: SAH... and possible not as well as the first test.
So then I did it again, but with only 10 strokes per set. Same result. and again, with the same result. Either source of slurry seemed to make no real difference.

hhm... learn something everyday. And it never hurts to challenge one's own assumptions.

Alright... I'l shut up now.
As you were... and completly disregard my previous post:)
 
A man who dares to question himself... More power to you, Chris. :thumbup: (not that I didn't know already that you had that quality)

Without trying to deny Floorpizza's observations, I do think that this is influenced by La Vertes being somewhat reluctant to release a good slurry. It's typically a stone where you need to make some extra effort for raising slurry. Maybe a soft slurry stone deals with that problem and influences our perception about the speed of the Coticule?

I had this project with Ralfson, where we tried to build a device to objectively measure the abrasive speed of hones. Our prototype did halfway function, but not good enough to allow testing within a reasonable time frame. I hope we will once finish what we started and then we'll be able to really measure the speed of hones in a completely objective manner.

Kind regards,
Bart.
 
Bart said:
A man who dares to question himself... More power to you, Chris. :thumbup: (not that I didn't know already that you had that quality)

Without trying to deny Floorpizza's observations, I do think that this is influenced by La Vertes being somewhat reluctant to release a good slurry. It's typically a stone where you need to make some extra effort for raising slurry. Maybe a soft slurry stone deals with that problem and influences our perception about the speed of the Coticule?

I had this project with Ralfson, where we tried to build a device to objectively measure the abrasive speed of hones. Our prototype did halfway function, but not good enough to allow testing within a reasonable time frame. I hope we will once finish what we started and then we'll be able to really measure the speed of hones in a completely objective manner.

Kind regards,
Bart.

I don't know if it's a typical quality of La Vertes, but mine is really hard. The Pike is very soft. We all know what happens when you rub something soft on something hard. The slurry on the La Verte consisted of pretty much just the Pike itself. The La Verte is so hard, I just don't think any of the slurry was contributed by the La Verte. It would appear that the Pike has a really generous load of garnets. Gradually diluting them on the hard La Verte surface left me with a much keener edge than what could be had from the pike.

The other slurry stone I use on the La Verte is an unknown vein, and almost as hard as the La Verte itself.

I should try a dilucot on the La Verte, using a DMT as the slurry stone. It would be nice to try a dilucot knowing that the slurry garnets are from the La Verte itself, and not possibly from the small slurry stone.

Always more experimentation to do... that's the fun part, IMO.

But at least I know I have a viable option in obtaining a good dilucot edge from my fantastic finishing La Verte. :)


tat2Ralfy said:
I'm your Huckleberry ;)

Regards
Ralfson (Dr)

I love that movie. :)
 
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