I saw a few episodes. The long distances involved can definitely make it difficult to get timely care.
Belgian Blue Whetstone
- Thread starter cotedupy
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Lovely, lovely, lovely!
Just about the only way to find a decent sized piece of BBW from next to the coti layer. I sent a really gorgeous piece to @Pie recently that was a similar affair.
Oh that looks like a fun one. I can confirm the purple stuff is most excellent.
Kawa
Senior Member
Thinking about asking a BBW for christmas. I only have synthetics now, and I want to try the 'toothy yet refined' experience a natural stone has for myself.
I like to finish my knives at a high gritt(5-8k), but I have to admit most steels don't hold it for long, leaving me with a slick, non cutting edge after a while.
Does it matter where I get my BBW from? I'm not talking shabby places, but I can order directly from ardennes-coticule or from some other respected sharpening gear sites.
I'm talking quality wise, not pricewise per se. Or are all the BBW's more or less the same?
I like to finish my knives at a high gritt(5-8k), but I have to admit most steels don't hold it for long, leaving me with a slick, non cutting edge after a while.
Does it matter where I get my BBW from? I'm not talking shabby places, but I can order directly from ardennes-coticule or from some other respected sharpening gear sites.
I'm talking quality wise, not pricewise per se. Or are all the BBW's more or less the same?
Sir. It’s a crime, although not necessarily your fault, that you haven’t tried natural stones considering what magic you can extract from synthetics.
I second this for the glorious edges, as well as almost synthetic speed that BBW bring to the table.
If it were me, I’d ask if @cotedupy is willing to chase down another goose
. Pretesting of natural stones is just about the only way to know exactly what you’re getting in terms of fineness and cleanliness. Perhaps this doesn’t apply as much outside jnats but there’s some… variation sometimes. That being said retailers for this sort of thing do have to maintain a reputation, I can’t imagine they’d sell a bad stone. From the actual origin, no less.
Kawa
Senior Member
Thx for your answer.
I am aware its a natural product, giving it variations among stones. Not as much as coticules do I believe (if I informed myself correctly), but still.
Thats the scary part of this natural rabbit hole I guess. That's why, if I buy, it will be from a respected place.
I notice the thrustworthy retailers all have about the same price.
When reading the JNAT topics, I sometimes notice people buy a 'fake' stone of ebay or something. Just a weak stone with a stamp on it or whatever the shimmy seller did to get way too much money.
Thats about what I mean with quality.
Let me rephrase:
What would be reasons to buy directly from ardennes-coticules, instead of dictum or knivesandtools? Can I expect the same quality stone, keeping natural variationsin mind?
Or is it, for example, known that Ardennes-coticules keep the finest stones and sell the coarser ones the other retailers?
I am aware its a natural product, giving it variations among stones. Not as much as coticules do I believe (if I informed myself correctly), but still.
Thats the scary part of this natural rabbit hole I guess. That's why, if I buy, it will be from a respected place.
I notice the thrustworthy retailers all have about the same price.
When reading the JNAT topics, I sometimes notice people buy a 'fake' stone of ebay or something. Just a weak stone with a stamp on it or whatever the shimmy seller did to get way too much money.
Thats about what I mean with quality.
Let me rephrase:
What would be reasons to buy directly from ardennes-coticules, instead of dictum or knivesandtools? Can I expect the same quality stone, keeping natural variationsin mind?
Or is it, for example, known that Ardennes-coticules keep the finest stones and sell the coarser ones the other retailers?
Yes, I think you probably could expect the same quality regardless of vendor. I'm not speaking from first hand experience but that would be an educated guess because...
IME Belgian Blue doesn't have anything like the level of variation that yellow coticule does. Obviously there is some, but really it's all pretty good, and certainly quite similar in terms of sharpening.
The minutiae of polishing can show up small differences between stones, and naturally bonded BBW, or stone that's from next to the coticule layer, tends to be a little bit faster usually. But really - from the dozens and dozens of BBW stones I've used there haven't been any that I didn't think were good, and the variation is small compared to most other types of stone.
Kawa
Senior Member
I guess i'll send the wife on a quest 
Looks an awful lot like bbw. Might be clearer with a wet pic. Looks nice!
Skylar303
Wannabe Stone/Razor/Knife Enthusiasts
The slate they use is a jet black, also. 
Ah, good to know. Thanks!The slate they use is a jet black, also.
Sweet stones!
As Skylar said - the colour is a dead giveaway, afaik no one has ever glued a coti onto a purple slate. That’d be confusing af!
The other thing in your first pics that showed it was clearly Belgian Blue are those little pinprick dot patterns it has. The large majority of BBW has that in some form.
You mean this stuff? That’s a great tip.
Tbh I assumed it was BBW when I got it, but that was only because I thought coti and BBW always came paired (naturally or otherwise)… so then when I realised that sometimes coticule was just bonded to slate I thought I better check!
Yep exactly. Look like very small, dark pinprick dots, and you get them on most BBW but not on purple slates. They're actually red if you look up close / under a scope so could be garnet for all I know, but I guess not because with visible bits of abrasive like that the stone would be very coarse.
And you're right - it was overwhelmingly likely to be BBW, I've had dozens of old cotis and not one has been slate-backed. It's a relatively recent thing done by AC once people started realising how good BBW was, so they could sell that separately and just use cheap imported slate to back yellow coticules.
In the past BBW was regarded as fairly useless, few older cotis show any sign of wear or dishing on the BBW side, and many have chips or bits out of them like yours does in the middle there. It was just used as backing because that's what they had to hand at the quarries.
As usual, both impressed with and appreciative of your knowledge on stones like these! Love it.
Kawa
Senior Member
Today I opened my frontdoor at 6 a.m to go to work and there was a package laying on the floor in front of the door, on the outside. Huh?
It was from Ardennes Coticules. My BBW!!
^$$$!@#$&
It is literally freezing in Holland right now. The stone layed outside the whole night (I guess). Who did this? The mailman (it's not common in Holland to put mail/ a package in front of a house)? A neighbour with good intentions who answered the mailman?
I was afraid the stone had cracks due to the cold, but I had no time to check at that time. It also could have been stolen..
Finally at home, I opened the package... Everything fine . No cracks, no moisture
So there was a beautiful 200x60 bbw, 5x5 slurry stone (bbw), a nice wooden case and even a sharpening angler. Soon I know what 15 degrees feels like
I told myself I was not allowed to take pictures or do anything other then put it back in the box it came with, since it's a Christmass present for me from my wife.
So at the 25th I will show it, maybe even after the initial lapping.
I allready have my Shiro Kamo aogami2 petty dull ready and waiting for it, can't wait to try it out!
It was from Ardennes Coticules. My BBW!!
^$$$!@#$&
It is literally freezing in Holland right now. The stone layed outside the whole night (I guess). Who did this? The mailman (it's not common in Holland to put mail/ a package in front of a house)? A neighbour with good intentions who answered the mailman?
I was afraid the stone had cracks due to the cold, but I had no time to check at that time. It also could have been stolen..
Finally at home, I opened the package... Everything fine . No cracks, no moisture
So there was a beautiful 200x60 bbw, 5x5 slurry stone (bbw), a nice wooden case and even a sharpening angler. Soon I know what 15 degrees feels like
I told myself I was not allowed to take pictures or do anything other then put it back in the box it came with, since it's a Christmass present for me from my wife.
So at the 25th I will show it, maybe even after the initial lapping.
I allready have my Shiro Kamo aogami2 petty dull ready and waiting for it, can't wait to try it out!
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Feels like a perfect hardness aoto. Specifically the one @Pie has. Edges need a little more deburring work than jnats though. Scratches the steel deeper than jnats though, but the iron is more even and darker than most jnats. Can still show banding but the darker iron obscures more. The edges are interesting. . . More aggressive teeth like pointier. It's easy to feel it on paper. The mud doesn't seem to break down or get viscous the same way like a jnat though. And I think the scratches are definitely not shallow, because I can feel texture on the iron and steel more then with a jnat, at the same scratch width.
I'd rather have @Pie 's aoto though haha
I'd rather have @Pie 's aoto though haha
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Mine feels very similar to a hard, Tamba Aoto
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Kanna with wrought
I touched up a Mundial on my BB yesterday.
I was pretty careful with deburring (including using the Martell double sharpening technique).
I can't recall ever getting Western Stainless this sharp. Effortless slicing through paper towel on the diagonal is not something I typically associate with Western stainless. It does make me think that my limitation on this steel to date has been incomplete removal of a tenacious burr.
Nice stone.
I was pretty careful with deburring (including using the Martell double sharpening technique).
I can't recall ever getting Western Stainless this sharp. Effortless slicing through paper towel on the diagonal is not something I typically associate with Western stainless. It does make me think that my limitation on this steel to date has been incomplete removal of a tenacious burr.
Nice stone.
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I've also been using a pocket sized BB on veggie peelers. Ours go in the dishwasher so they don't stay sharp that long.
I use a pocket sized SiC stone (the cheap ones that are sold in hardware stores for pocket knives) to create an edge and then to refine the burr with lower pressure. Then I complete the deburring with the BB. Very nice to have sharp veggie peelers again.
I use a pocket sized SiC stone (the cheap ones that are sold in hardware stores for pocket knives) to create an edge and then to refine the burr with lower pressure. Then I complete the deburring with the BB. Very nice to have sharp veggie peelers again.
That's interesting.
I don't sharpen much stainless tbh, but when I do I tended to finish quite low. Both because the steel is often quite wear-resistant, and also just received wisdom seems to say that it doesn't take higher grit finishes very well. And I often struggle with quite clingy burrs, or when they are 'deburred' the edges sometimes seem a bit ragged, like they haven't deburred as cleanly as other steels do.
Then the other day I was testing out a Llyn Idwal, a very fine stone probably more suited to razors, and in knife terms relatively slow. I grabbed one of my family's cheapy Vitorinox knives for it, and was rather surprised at the end when the edge still had bite and teeth, but was now zinging through kitchen roll in a way it never had before.
Perhaps I need to re-think my approach to inexpensive stainless...
I used the BB on the basis that the rolling garnets are supposed to abrade the burr, so in my mind's eye, I was using it as a burr muncher rather than a fine stone.
I did worry about abrading the matrix around the hard vanadium carbides, although the amount of V in these steels is pretty low IIRC. Garnets should be harder than all of the other carbides in the steel, although the matrix is softer than the types of steels I usually sharpen, so maybe there is some scope for preferentially abrading the matrix. OTOH, the garnets in BB are pretty large, so maybe they function a bit more like a coarse stone when it comes to the ability to preferentiallyabrade the matrix?
To be clear, this is all supposition on my part. But the BB did put the best edge on the knife that it has ever had.
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