Opinions sought...BBW

Top of the day everyone!...I've been shaving with a few straights off and on since March of this year along with learning the art of honing and keeping their edges keen using an LPB bout. If I slow down and take my time with the LPB bout I can develop a good (for a beginner) edge that is shave worthy. Lately I've been kicking around using a BBW in progression along with my LPB bout as outlined on Bart's site (coticule.be)

What I'd like is to hear of other's experiences using a BBW in progression along with any coti but if you have or used the BBW w/an LPB, great, open up...I'm all ears


Best,


Jake
Reddick Fla.

I have several razors I prefer the BBW to keep them keen with. The best shaves I get from razors with harder steel come from the BBW of my hones. No Yellow coticule side used at all. If you search Coticule.be you'll find several articles outlining such use and an intensive study. Give it a try its much easier to get an edge from too. Unlike the Yellow you get a very keen edge from a thick slurry then switch to water only to polish it and then strop and shave. Try it and see for your self if you like it. What have you to lose? 20 minutes it took to hone the edge? (Or less) What have others deiscovered when they have tried it?

I have one razor I use, a thomas turner, that I honed using my bbw, as lifetoshort says, it does give a nice edge to a razor, I followed something on here I think, on how to use the hone, and again, as lifetoshort mentions, I used a nice slurry, then onto water till it passed the hht!

I've tried the methods developed on coticule.be with very good results.
I use the BBW sometimes for touch-ups & finishes, sometimes as a bridge in the 3K-8K range & most of the time on my woodworking tools.

I gave it a try a few times, and found it left a perfectly acceptable edge, though it lacks the je ne sais quoi of the yellow side. The feed-back I found to be less pronounced, and not as easy to read as the yellow side, nor is it as fast. In a blind test, I doubt i could tell the difference in edges TBH. I haven't found that certain blades do better with it than any other stone though (in my modest collection).

Life2short honed two razors on coticules for me a while back. I was trying to learn the difference in layers and the difference between brisk and mellow. I asked him to put two different edges on and not tell me which layer he used until after I had used them and reported back to him my impressions. Both were eminently shaveable, but one was distinctly, if subtly, keener than the other. When I told him which one i thought was sharpest, the sneaky devil told me he had finished that one on a BBW not a coticule. That got my attention. As I recall he said he didn't use the exact method outlined on coticule.be, but whatever he did it worked well.

I've tried the BBW but can't get an edge I like enough.

I do think there is a difference in bbw's. The ones with the Pink spots are generally easier to get a nice edge from but that doesn't mean you can't get the same edge from one without .It may just take a little more coaxing. If you would like Mark your welcome to send me a blade and try one of mine.

I don't want to hijack the thread, but I don't want to start another thread either since we're on the subject of BBW's.
A BBW is supposed to be around 4000 grit, now this is where I scratch my head.
When I think of a 4k stone, I don't think of a finishing stone. I've always thought that finishing stones were 12k to 16k.?
Obviously there is something very different going on here or I'm just totally lost--probably a lot of both.
The way it sounds, all you would need is a 1k stone and a BBW to go from butter knife to shave ready.

If you just look at the size o the abrasive than the BBW is coarser but because it encased in other slow wearing sediments it does not have the abrasive power it would if if it was not in the composition it is. the Garnets though large are only barely being scraped by the razor so they are wearing slowly. That is the simple explanation. And you can go from butterknife to shave ready with a 1k and a BBW or just a BBW or coticule if you have enough time on your hands.

Thanks, the simple explantion made my brain sputter, smoke then click. The word "grit" really screwed me up.
A BBW sounds like a good choice to the more expensive alternative. The more you read on hones the more you learn, the more you learn the more options you unlock. I hate having so many options. I'm glad I'm not impulsive or I would have a stones lying all over and no clue which one to use. At some point I need to jump in though.

JohnnyDemonic said:

Thanks, the simple explantion made my brain sputter, smoke then click. The word "grit" really screwed me up.
A BBW sounds like a good choice to the more expensive alternative. The more you read on hones the more you learn, the more you learn the more options you unlock. I hate having so many options. I'm glad I'm not impulsive or I would have a stones lying all over and no clue which one to use. At some point I need to jump in though.

Click to expand...

"Grit" really only applies to synthetics.
We still talk about grits on naturals, probably a human thing, since almost everyone of us likes to put things in a understandable context & relation to other things.
I'm glad it "clicked" for you now. But beware, the rabbit hole that is closely related to hones are probably both the widest & deepest of them all. Don't say we didn't warn you ;=D

The simpler explanation is that they're not 4k. That's some number someone made up years ago when this type of stone was very poorly understood. They were wrong. (The funny thing is that the originator of this erroneous fact was Ardennes-Coticule themselves.) You may find this interesting: Belgian Blue Whetstone - a study about its aptness for razor sharpening

My BBWs have arrived from Ardennes Coticule and I have the following questions:

-do I need to lap them before use?
-I thought I wood try something easy to start off my honing adventure, am I right in assuming that if I take one of my razors which was honed by a professional and touch up the blade on the BBW, I do not run the risk of destroying the bevel?

Thanks in advance for your help!

JohnnyDemonic said:

I don't want to hijack the thread, but I don't want to start another thread either since we're on the subject of BBW's.
A BBW is supposed to be around 4000 grit, now this is where I scratch my head.
When I think of a 4k stone, I don't think of a finishing stone. I've always thought that finishing stones were 12k to 16k.?
Obviously there is something very different going on here or I'm just totally lost--probably a lot of both.
The way it sounds, all you would need is a 1k stone and a BBW to go from butter knife to shave ready.

Click to expand...

Well a coticule is only supposed to be around 8K (from ardennes themselves), but I can get every bit as good an edge on my coticules as I can my escher (which is "supposed" to be 12-15K). Short story short, don't believe everything you read and assigning grit ratings to natural stones is pointless.

Gustav said:

My BBWs have arrived from Ardennes Coticule and I have the following questions:

-do I need to lap them before use?
-I thought I wood try something easy to start off my honing adventure, am I right in assuming that if I take one of my razors which was honed by a professional and touch up the blade on the BBW, I do not run the risk of destroying the bevel?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Click to expand...

I'm not chock full of knowledge like many others here, but I would take a staight edge to it before doing anything then look for any flaws. I don't think lapping it is going to hurt anything, so if you want to have at it.

I think everyone runs a risk of destoying a bevel when they take a blade to a stone. The part that helps is knowing if the person who honed it before you taped the spine at all and if so, how many layers. You want to keep the same angle so you're actually working the edge--tape changes the angle of the bevel. If it was honed without tape and you put a piece on the spine, you're going to grind the bevel.

Anyone, please correct me if I'm wrong. Giving bad advice is one thing, but not knowing is far worse.

As has already been said above: don't focus on the 'grit' with natural hones. As people are finding out, it's possible to get excellent shaving edges from hones that have reported low grits.

I've used the BBW for honing before, and I really like the edge it produces. It does seem to provide a little extra keenness over a coticule, but I think that's because it cuts slower, allowing more optimization (or, at least, easier optimization).

Yep, the hones are pretty flat from Ardennes. Usually, there's no need to lap them - they're not perfectly flat, but then, they don't need to be. I'm sure there are outliers , though.

I can only second the points made above:
1: taking a razor to a BBW is not more dangerous than taking it to another hone, the worst thing that can happen to you is you have to fully rehone the razor(but that's part of the fun isn't it?)
2: there is no need to lap them ardennes laps their bbw as there coticules to what they call "reasonable flatness" but if you really want to be sure you can lap it but there is no need for it(note that a hone doesn't need to be 100% flat to hone a razor as long as it's not excessive)

kind regards
Stijn

Gustav said:

My BBWs have arrived from Ardennes Coticule and I have the following questions:

-do I need to lap them before use?
-I thought I wood try something easy to start off my honing adventure, am I right in assuming that if I take one of my razors which was honed by a professional and touch up the blade on the BBW, I do not run the risk of destroying the bevel?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Click to expand...

~~~when I bought my LPB bout from Jarrod @thesuperiorshave last March, he pencil grid lapped it twice using a DMT under running water. I stood there and watched him do it. That bout was not flat before the lapping he did and AFAIK, Jarrod buys all of his cotis from Ardennes...so I would think it's empirical for you to flatten unless Ardennes did it for you. If'n it were me I'd contact therm to find out or you could pencil grid yourself and lap it to see what you have. There certainly is a lot of stone there so I wouldn't be concerned with what you remove to check

FWIW, I recently purchased a dual sharp from DMT...325 and 650 grits IIRC, mainly to rescue my 8" chef knife but I also figured on using the DMT to lap my coti, which I did for the first time last week since buying the bout in March. I did a pencil grid before lapping. The center was most definitely cupped


Best,


Jake
Reddick Fla.