Has anyone ever heard of...?

[gaetanocarpinelli]

Ardennes Coticule?
So I found this natural whetstone (apparently from France) on a knives and tools European website, since it's so cheap (only 10$) I might give it a try. Has anyone ever had one or sharpened anything with this stone?

 

[kayman67]

What exactly is the product? 10$ seems awfully cheap for BBW or a coticule, unless is a small piece.

 

[gaetanocarpinelli]

I was wrong, in fact the price is actually 34$ (still cheap imo)

 

[kayman67]

That's a coticule on a slate (the black part, that's not really usable for sharpening). How long is it? 10cm?

 

[gaetanocarpinelli]

Yea, it's 100x40 mm

 

[kayman67]

Well, in hand, I could sharpen a knife with it, but would not really recommend you to do the same unless you have experience with this and really want to try a coticule.

 

[DHunter86]

$34 is cheap-ish for a coticule of that size. I have a larger one at 200mm by 50mm, but the price is exponentially higher. Coticules are typically mounted on slates or cut with a portion of BBW as they are quite fragile.

I like the finish I get from it, but am not experienced enough to bring out its full potential yet. Apparently pressure control and judicious management of the slurry can lead to many different results with this stone. There appears to be a large camp of straight razor users who swear by a coticule.

On a stainless steel knife (from Yoshikin - manufacturer of Global knives), I get a pretty keen edge, with a uniform hazy mirror finish. I've not used my coticule that much as I'm still in the learning stage of using natural stones, and did not want to burn through such an expensive stone. Haven't tried it on my carbon steel blades yet.

 

[riba]

I have two small bouts. One I use for quick tough ups for which it works well - quickly a nice bitey yet refined edge. I just use it wet and handheld.

 

[inferno]

coticules are good for low alloyed SS like aeb-l, 420, 440c, 12c27 etc and also low alloyed carbons such as white/blue/1095/o1. they might even work on vg10 (but slow), outside of this they work extremely slow if at all. try doing 63hrc r2 on a coti and you know what i mean.

 

[musicman980]

I find coticules work extremely fast on my white, blue, and super blue knives, even my vg10 parer. Their cutting medium is garnet which works extremely well and doesn't lose its bite readily. My coticules blew my jnats out of the water in terms of speed. Some coticules can be really slow though, better at polishing.

 

[kayman67]

Some definitely work for ZDP-189 HRC 66-67.

 

[inferno]

but not really synth fast i guess.

 

[M1k3]

but not really synth fast i guess.

Or other naturals