Synthetic coticule. WIP

I know the stone he's talking about, it looks similar to a frictionite in dimension and divide, it's just white and red rather than tan and grey. They're often misidentified as "possible coticule" on eBay simply because they're a two-colored barbers hone and one side is white. I'm pretty sure it's unrelated to these sort of stones, which are a large soft white section on a very thin slate backing.

That said, I don't doubt that there are multiple types of stones similar to or possibly related to this one. There's these (thin slate backed unlabeled, usually long and thin cut), the reforms (QTES? I don't remember the exact branding), which seem more traditionally barber-hone shaped and also appear a bit looser or grittier than this stone seems, then the Pike Beljians, and possibly others.

Jges

Yeah, those, thanks.

Mine doesn't drink water really but it does absorb it rather slowly. I didn't think mine was porous til I put a couple drops of oil on it and it soaked in. I have handled several of differing hardness and they all look identical although of slightly different hardness. I believe its a matter of what state of decay the binder is in.

I think the ones with the reddish halves are Winner or Champion or something.

Ok, first of all, I want this stone.

Now, I'm going to preface this post by saying I'm making a LOT of assumptions here, and I'm pretty much awed at this stone right now. So after some more time I may wind up eating my words. That said:

I just did a dilucot on it off a 1.2k DMT. It took about four minutes, and was successful. It still did not blacken the slurry, at any point. There was no evidence on the stone that it was removing steel. But it's honed... at least to coticule level now. That doesn't PROVE it's got coti garnets in it, but it certainly proves that "dilu-whateverthisis" works.

The first point is, I did not realize they could MAKE synths this good in the era I've presumed these were made. This stone is really, really good. It blows everything I've tested for my barbers synth test out of the water. Not even close.

The second point is, there's something here that makes this stone very fast on slurry. I can't do a similar dilucot on a thuri, apache, etc. It takes far, far, far more time to pull something like this off. Now this was a very hollow ground razor in really good (NOS) shape, but still, that level of speed is definitely unusual. What's more unusual is that speed without turning the slurry black. Coticule slurry at the level I raised on this stone turns black very quickly, even on slower stones. That combined with the scope pics of the slurry leaves me with a guess at what this is.

I suspect it's a stone made of sifted coti dust, where the mesh was well below the typical size of coti garnets. The speed suggests that the abrasives are present in sufficient quantity for honing from a typical set bevel.. but the unusually sharp finish for a coticule suggests to me that the abrasive can't possibly be a complete sample of coticule garnets, were that the case, it would be the worlds finest coticule by a significant amount. I certainly can't say with certainty that the abrasives are coticule garnets, nor could I say that if they are they aren't supplemented by additional abrasives, but the behavior on thick slurry suggests A: that a material similar to coticule garnets is in the slurry and B: that this material is far more regular in size and finer on average than coticule garnets in any stone I've possessed.

DMT 1.2k edge vs this edge after ~4min dilution honing.

I'm really surprised how far it took that 1.2k edge in that short of a time. Are you going to shave off that edge?

Its carborundum or something geez you guys just because a stone is white it is not automatically related to a coticule.

Sell me yours for carborundum price, then.


I can't say it's made from coticules. I have NO proof of that. What I can say is the edge off it is about as fine as off my highest grit synthetics (coti's aren't near that), about as comfortable as off a coticule (synths aren't near that), and it's faster (with regards to effect on edge, not metal removed) on slurry than MANY coticules I've owned (I'd love to find a synthetic maker today who can make stones that do that).


And yeah, I'm skipping the 8k to this stone edge I cooked up last night and shaving off the dilution honed edge.

I can't I just gave it away. Sorry Ian. As for its performance I agree it does well. If I did not have a nice coticule I would be happy to have to have one as a finisher.

Dilucot #2. A couple more minutes than the first... initial slurry raised through self-slurrying under pressure from the razor.


This stone is very soft... I would NOT use it for dilucot if I owned one, as you would wear through it at an incredible rate. A waste of an amazing stone. This will be my last dilucot on this one. From here on, I'll just use it as a finisher.

This stone is faster than the vast majority of coticules on slurry, maybe faster than any I've used. But it's MASSIVELY more efficient. Coticules turn the slurry black fast because of slurry dulling, this stone has ZERO noticeable slurry dulling. Aside from being WAY too soft to ever think about using for anything but razors, or wanting to dilucot on, it's like a perfect coticule. I'm thinking my guess was dead on, but my first thoughts were inaccurate. I think this is made of an extremely high concentration of abrasive, but it's far, far, far finer and more regularly sized than a coticule naturally is. I don't know if they were able to grind the garnets down and preserve some of their honing properties, if it's some other abrasive entirely which emulates the effects of garnets to some degree, or just very selectively filtered garnets.

But this stone is amazing. It's both the finest and easiest coticule I've ever used... except it's not a coticule. It's the thuringian of coticules.

And I disagree with David. It doesn't smell like a natural. It smells like newspaper. Which is what a couple old stones I felt were reform eschers smelled like. Also has the same little "worms" of fiber in the slurry (though not nearly as many as those did).

I remember raising a slurry on mine just one time and it made the god awfullest sound like there were diamond nuggets rolling around in it. I gave it a second to see if it would calm down and it really didn't so that that was the only time I slurried it.

This stone doesn't even feel like there's anything harder than steel in it. It's like honing on a brick of magnesium carbonate (chalk).

The feel reminds me a bit of that victory hone I reviewed (first of the barber hone reviews)... a little like a Naniwa SS 12k, but much softer and a less definite abrasive sensation.

I got one from livio a few years back that was very soft too. Like when barbers hones start to break down. Mine was somewhere between Swaty and Frictionite hard.

Gave the dilucot edge a few minutes on water.


This stone is really, really fine on water, in case you can't tell, scratches 100% obscured to the camera (may be visible to the eye, but I'm not gonna swap it out). I'll get a .62 micron synth shot up in a few minutes to compare. One more shave off this stone, then I'm gonna shave off that .62 to figure out which is closer.

Left is this stone on water. Right is 13k SP.

I could get a mirror bevel from the one I had just like film.

And for the sake of comparison to a natural in this region of grit, a jnat finish

That isnt exactly putting an estimate to it Ian. Thats like saying Mercedes 230SL drives like a Japanese car.

A very, very, very fine Jnat finish.

The finest finish I've ever shaved off. Including pastes to 0.25micron. Shapton 30k, SP 13k, and several other Jnats. I can literally carve hanging hairs with this finish. Shave in on both sides and create an hourglass shape, etc. It's ridiculously sharp.