Maintaining coticule edge

This is basically aimed at coticule user's. How many shaves are you coticule user's averaging before your edge drops of?
Also how many strokes on water brings back your coticule edge back to life.

Gary

I don't keep up with my shaves or my laps, but I'm guessing that I do water only touch ups with a coti every 6-8 shaves. I start out with circles with light pressure and finish under running water with very light x-strokes. Takes me 4-5 minutes to do the touch up, then I check HHT, strop on genuine linen then kanayama 60k and shave. Most of the coticules I own are super hard and dead slow on water.

I got over two months out of a Wade and Butcher just using Flax linen and leather. The edge was still quite shaveable, but it had lost that last little bit to provide its best effort. No idea at all on how many laps I do for touch ups, but typically 15-20 minutes, but I have seen your videos and you are WAY WAY faster than me on a hone.

There's no doubt I could go a lot longer with just linen and leather, but I like to hone, and I don't have that many razors so they see the stones more often than they should.

I've sort of changed how I use my coticuies. I've been using them a lot more lately with water only, using synthetics to do the midrange work. So far it's been working well for me. I know Jarrod [MENTION=105493]The Superior Shave[/MENTION] does this, as does Dr Matt and Sharpchef. I think the dilucot is why a lot of guys struggle with cotis....it's quite difficult to get the hang of and can be frustrating at times. Water only finishing is much easier and you still get the smooth edges cotis are known for.

About 8-10? I do around 40-50 laps to touch up, but I am using a La Verte and just water for that, and it is a really hard stone.

Interesting comments, the reason I ask is in all the years I,ve been using coticules, I never performed that many touch ups? I have on acassion, shave with one razor and I found by 7th shave or so , and the razor had lost a tiny bit of smoothness , 30 laps on water brought it right back. I think with a coticule its a good idea to touch up the razor before it realy pulls , more so when a tiny drag kicks in, catch it there and you can bring the edge back..

Dcaddo111 said:

I've sort of changed how I use my coticuies. I've been using them a lot more lately with water only, using synthetics to do the midrange work. So far it's been working well for me. I know Jarrod @The Superior Shave does this, as does Dr Matt and Sharpchef. I think the dilucot is why a lot of guys struggle with cotis....it's quite difficult to get the hang of and can be frustrating at times. Water only finishing is much easier and you still get the smooth edges cotis are known for.

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I wTched dr matts video I did try going from 5 k to coticule and it did work but I felt I lacked that true coticule feel, I,m sure with practise it would be better. Mastro livi goes from 3 k to coti with water he also rely son pasted loom strop then leather.

david what grits are you using before you finish on the coticule? Last time I spoke with jarrard I was under the impression he did,nt own any synthetic stones maybe he does now.

I love to hone so I use my edge for 4-8 shaves tops (most of my coticule hones work a touch up in 20-100 laps depending on the stone plus I do not keep a strict count - I hone and shave in zen).

gary haywood said:

I wTched dr matts video I did try going from 5 k to coticule and it did work but I felt I lacked that true coticule feel, I,m sure with practise it would be better. Mastro livi goes from 3 k to coti with water he also rely son pasted loom strop then leather.

david what grits are you using before you finish on the coticule? Last time I spoke with jarrard I was under the impression he did,nt own any synthetic stones maybe he does now.

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Gary, I'm going Chosera 1k, Nuba 5k, Snow White 8k then finishing on hard coticules with water only.
I'm not sure what Jarrod is using, but I think (based on some of his recent videos) he's just using coticules with water only.

I think Jarrod goes water only for touch-ups based on his videos, but he sets bevels on the razors he sells (and will readily tell you about the slurry speed of a listed stone on the site if you send an email) so he must be using slurry. He's got an account here as The Superior Shave iirc, maybe he can chime in directly.


aside: are the username mention tags not working for anybody else? I tried using them in this post but in the preview it prefixed the username wrapped in the tags with an @ and suffixed it with a ; rather than generating a link to the appropriate profile page. At first I thought spaces in a username were breaking it, but experimenting with a username without spaces had the same result.

gary haywood said:

Interesting comments, the reason I ask is in all the years I,ve been using coticules, I never performed that many touch ups? I have on acassion, shave with one razor and I found by 7th shave or so , and the razor had lost a tiny bit of smoothness , 30 laps on water brought it right back. I think with a coticule its a good idea to touch up the razor before it realy pulls , more so when a tiny drag kicks in, catch it there and you can bring the edge back..

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I will have to give more frequent touch ups a try. It might be a fun way to touch up on one stone vs another to compare edges.

nunhgrader said:

I love to hone so I use my edge for 4-8 shaves tops (most of my coticule hones work a touch up in 20-100 laps depending on the stone plus I do not keep a strict count - I hone and shave in zen).

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Ino exactly what you mean lol

Dcaddo111 said:

Gary, I'm going Chosera 1k, Nuba 5k, Snow White 8k then finishing on hard coticules with water only.
I'm not sure what Jarrod is using, but I think (based on some of his recent videos) he's just using coticules with water only.

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Have you got the link to his resent videos?

gary haywood said:

Have you got the link to his resent videos?

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I don't have them handy Gary but I'll try and post some links when I get home tonight.

Gary he has them on youtube if you search it for The Superior Shave; unfortunately we are no longer allowed to post video links here because B&B now has a video section, though. Which is cool, don't get me wrong.

I don't really count strokes and enjoy honing too much. So I don't wait till the razor is having issues and I love using different types of stones and just trying new edges. I can say I have one that I have kept as a coticule specific razor. I believe I went around 10 shaves and couldn't really tell if it was starting to loose a bit of the edge, but used my Verte with about 2-5 swipes of the slurry stone (so it was still really clear) and touched up the edge making it even better than it was before. I would guess maybe 15-30 laps very quick strop on linen and bison. I think like 20 linen and 35-40 bison. Now this is an old James Johnson silver steel stub tail wedge from around 1820's and gets really sharp. I feel like the steel is softer, but I don't know. Not sure if this helps any but it is all I got.

stoop said:

Gary he has them on youtube if you search it for The Superior Shave; unfortunately we are no longer allowed to post video links here because B&B now has a video section, though. Which is cool, don't get me wrong.

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I didn't know that.....

Dcaddo111 said:

I didn't know that.....

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I was "politely informed"

stoop said:

I was "politely informed"

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Ahh...ok. Well thanks for letting me know. I link videos all the time.