He said "for science"....focus boys...focus!
Coticules
- Thread starter cotedupy
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Oh, i missed that! My mistake.
I'm thinking about picking up my first coti from Ardennes. Does anyone know what the difference is between the standard, select and select plus? I picked up a BBW from sharpening supplies and it feels terrible to sharpen on. Like loose gravel and deep scratches if I polish on it. From what I've read this is not the norm so I'm hoping getting it from the source will allay these issues... I haven't tried the coticule layer before.
user 16756
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the select plus are LV layer.
why not just send an email and describe what you want? the process seemed pretty painless to me.
Not sure if you saw my post above but I had the exact same experience with my BBW from SS, it's just the surface finish from the cutting process making it feel bad. I got after it with a 140 diamond plate to remove some material and it's way nicer now. Still not quite as creamy as the small one from AC I got but much closer now.
Just put in the comments section at AC what your use case will be and Rob will hook you up. I just ordered a bigger coticule after loving the small one from there and he just asked for a few pics and was able to send me a bigger version of the same stone. The coti's feel really good
After 2 failed delivery attempts...
Big coti; big smile
Big coti; big smile
Just picked up a beastly old boogar from the flea market for an embarrassingly low price.
Boom! Nice score
Given the scratches, you saved it from a terrible fate!
That's a real find, what a peach!
I think the best picture of that rock is yet to come....
That's a real find, what a peach!
I think the best picture of that rock is yet to come....
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That will clean up a treat. Good size for razors, if that is something you are interested in.
I got that big girl cleaned up. She is beautiful. I have had lots of coticules. The three I have kept are vintage natural combos. Small, medium, and large (at least for coticules).
Next to a Super Stone for size reference.
Next to a Super Stone for size reference.
I sure am intrigued by the coticules and bbw. I’ve been wanting to take my sharpening up a notch or two. I’m using SG500 and 2k — is the coticule a logical progression for finishing?
Right now I’m getting edges that shave arm hair but not that easily. Wondering if this stone is going to make me smile.
Are y’all stropping after, or is this the final step?
Right now I’m getting edges that shave arm hair but not that easily. Wondering if this stone is going to make me smile.
Are y’all stropping after, or is this the final step?
The beauty of a coticule is it is an entire progression unto itself. Going from about 500 grit with a slurry up to about 4000 grit or beyond. I usually use them for touchups and for midgrit work for straight razors. I don't strop knives. But coticules make great knife finishers for sure if that is all that you wanted to use them for. Very fine but not lacking teeth. It's just that they are much more versatile than that.
I have to confess that I have never really cared for BBW. I haven't used them much despite owning several natural combos. But they are generally worse at both the lower end (less cutting power) and the higher end (less polishing power). They are usually quite a bit cheaper and more readily available in sizes that knife people are familiar with. Coticules are among the most expensive sharpening stones per square centimeter of cutting surface.
Coticules for sharpening.
BBW for polishing.
user 16756
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tbh Ive found plenty of Shobudani/Aiiwatani/Atagoyama tomaes to give great edges and the prices make more sense to me than coticules. maybe even better than those are Aizus, granted theyre a bit coarse for me but most folks around here love them. You can buy a lifetime sized one for less than a decently sized coti.
coticules are nice and all and while I own two nice ones neither was cheap and neither is as good as any of my favorite suitas JMO IMO IME YMMC FWIW IDK MY BFF JILL
coticules are nice and all and while I own two nice ones neither was cheap and neither is as good as any of my favorite suitas JMO IMO IME YMMC FWIW IDK MY BFF JILL
With good reason.
Wait now hold up. A challenger enters the ring.
I will say that coticules are often a safer bet. I think you need a pretty good education in Jnats to get a really good one. I've only been disappointed in a coticule once.
But I'm ready to learn more and have my mind changed. Consider myself subscribed to your newsletter.
*sharpens pitchfork on a coticule*
Coti will be a great finisher as well as being a do-it-all stone. Usually I go Chosera 800>3k>BBW>coti but can mix and match any of them really. I've got 3 and they're all the best feeling stones I have. Very smile inducing and can cut steel that a BBW struggles with. I keep a small one in my field bag to touch up a S30V pocket knife that my BBW can only polish.
That said, they are spensive and I've never tried any JNats to compare. @tcmx3 may be a heretic but has good taste in stones and might be able to point you towards something more reasonably priced if you wanna go a different route.
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TBH you dont need that much education. You need luck and/or money, or you message someone that you can trust.
Aizus have been pretty consistent for me and I feel like you can buy a 2kg one for 400 all day. In fact I got one from Ed for 400 that if I were just doing edges would last generations. That and a strop with some finer diamond paste? Smoking edges.
If you want finer, like coti fineness, wait till Maxim puts stuff on sale and grab one of his Atagoyamas.
Or, theyre a bit on the softer side, but Jon really only sells edge tennen toishi most of the time and anything you buy from him will be good.
I guess I should be clear here. If you want edges I think are as good, you can buy a larger JNat for the same price. If you care about getting the best edge yeah youre gonna be out some $. Yet to find anything I like better than a really nice Okudo suita for that though I have some harder Ohiras that are close.
I want to reiterate I dont think coticules are bad at all, I just think they are neither great value propositions, nor are they the best stones you can buy. Theyre still good edge stones and the prices are reasonable IMO.
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If all we are talking is edges, Cotis are amazing and will allow you to adjust the cutting feel of the edge to whatever the sharpener is capable of achieving as far as getting a clean apex, deburring, and refinement, on almost any steel. They tend to also be very fast for their equivalent grit, and I find they have a really enjoyable feel while using them. All of the other natural stones that I've used are less capable in one, or several, of those aspects, but they are (typically) more forgiving on precision in technique than Cotis.
I feel like @cotedupy would have a very good perspective on them W/R/T edge work in comparison to other natural stones.
Alright then; here are my 2c for what they're worth, which probably isn't much more than 2c frankly, but feck it...
The first thing I would emphasize to anyone new to the Belgian stones is something @tcmx3 and @stringer both point out above: Yellow Coticule is very, very expensive. The price per gram of a good Coticule bought new is at the level of some of the most expensive jnats out there, stones that cost several thousand dollars, because coti veins are thin - it simply doesn't come in jnat sizes.
Furthermore Coticules are highly variable. There is as much, possibly more, variation as there is across all jnats. I have one that abrades faster and leaves deeper, coarser striation than an SG500, and others that will finish a razor to the highest level. I have never bought a Coticule new, but if you want to be sure of how one is going to act then you'll need to bite the bullet and spend big bucks. And it's getting increasingly hard to find old ones on the cheap anyway, compared to how it was 18 months ago.
Why then do we go on about these expensive and unpredictable stones? To put it simply, the answer is: Speed. Even without slurry a good Coticule can be blindingly fast at a very high level. Used with zero pressure the stone below will finish a razor happily, but increase that pressure only slightly and it will do this:
And if used with slurry it would be considerably faster still. All of which means that good Coticules can have a very large range, and makes them perfect for those extremely sharp yet toothy edges that we're all chasing.
I don't have as much experience with jnats as some people here, but I've used a few; I'd say more than 50 but less than 100. Which is probably twice as many as I've used Coticules, because I've never been lent a coticule or tried someone else's - I've owned every one I've used. And no Japanese stone I know can do what a good Coticule can. The closest have been a couple of high end Nakayama from Alex G's 'hoard', but they were harder than most of the very best Coticules, so they weren't quite as fast.
Though there have quite a number of other jnats I'd consider to be (to pick an arbitrary number) 80% as good for edges as cotis are, whilst costing a far smaller fraction than that relative to their weight and lifespan. Note also that it is uncommon for yellow Coticule to polish particularly well, some can do, but it's rare in comparison to Japanese stones.
Of course these things are all subjective, and other people will like different things. But for my money; Coticules, Washitas, and Turkish can provide the ultimate in kitchen knife edges. The stone below is a 10 x 2.5" natural combi, and I think perhaps the most excellent sharpening stone I've ever used. I paid about $15 US (equivalent) for it, but if you tried to buy something similar new it'd probably cost the best part of a grand. Very good coticules are very, very good, but unless you get very lucky - they are not very cheap.
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I think there is gonna be some horses for courses going on.
@cotedupy to your point re which jnats, I own several high end maruka stamped nakayamas, tomae and a namito. all are truly amazing stones, incredible polishers and edges but more than that just well behaved, easy going stones for how hard they are. but consistently my favorite edge stones have been okudo suitas.
but they are often very hard. and expensive. so very expensive.
plus I seem to be in a very small minority that finds them to be ideal kitchen knife stones. probably comes down to my preferred steels, edge angles and cutting technique that they work so well for me.
@cotedupy to your point re which jnats, I own several high end maruka stamped nakayamas, tomae and a namito. all are truly amazing stones, incredible polishers and edges but more than that just well behaved, easy going stones for how hard they are. but consistently my favorite edge stones have been okudo suitas.
but they are often very hard. and expensive. so very expensive.
plus I seem to be in a very small minority that finds them to be ideal kitchen knife stones. probably comes down to my preferred steels, edge angles and cutting technique that they work so well for me.
So here's something that demonstrates quite neatly what @stringer was saying above.
I got a new (or rather very old) coti the other day, it looked nice enough, but not necessarily like it’s going to be completely remarkable:
It’s medium-ish hardness, and quite fine grained, but oh my is it fast! I was not expecting this:
I was actually testing it for speed and grit rather than polishing, so that kiri had just just come of an SG500. But nevertheless you can see in the two pics below that the stone is already completely erasing 500 grit scratch marks and taking the core steel toward mirror. These pictures were taken after about 90 seconds use:
And after another minute and a half - the SG500 marks are basically gone:
This is a really sensational stone, and may be the best polishing Coticule I’ve ever had.
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Ha, I almost mentioned Okudo Suita in the same breath as the Nakayama above. The reason I didn't is that I've only ever used one; a small-ish koppa* I got from Ed T a while back, so didn't feel particularly qualified to comment. But yes - this is certainly a very good edge stone imo too, and I'd say surprisingly fast for the level it's working at.
* One of the nice things for me having done so much sharpening, and learning, on old Western natural stones is that I'm very comfortable using quite small jnats and koppa. One day I'd absolutely love to have a proper full-size Okudo Suita, but also happy that for the time being I can get away with one much smaller and cheaper.
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Missed this post originally, but that's a very nice pickup eh.
Decent size old natural combi, that hasn't had the coti layer worn down to within a millimetre of its life... not an every day find!
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Missed this post originally, but that's a very nice pickup eh.
Decent size old natural combi, that hasn't had the coti layer worn down to within a millimetre of it's life... not an every day find!
I go to the flea market / antique / thrift stores several times per month for the last ten or twelve years and I've never seen a coticule. Much less a beast like this. I feel very fortunate. Best part. Got it for $15. Told my wife it was worth at least ten times that. She wasn't impressed. "Why does that matter, you will never sell it." Well she knows me well.
My partner has pet cats, I have pet rocks. At least my pets don't **** in the bath tub
And make no mistake, mine are cheaper.
And make no mistake, mine are cheaper.
I think I speak for everybody here in wanting to know the answer to this important question: Are the cats s***ting in the bathtub, or are they f***ing...?
