Description
I don’t care which ‘vein’ it is, if the Belgians write on the stone definitively I’ll say so, otherwise I don’t care to speculate. The best coticule I’ve ever used or owned is a no-name/not-vein-designated “standard” grade stone (because it had some fissures/deposits, but they don’t harm str8rzrs), and it is a pity that it will forever be 40x175mm and not a penny wider, but it goes to show you can find greatness in the least hallowed places, such as a stone that sat unsold on my old, old site for at least a year! If you must pay extra for a vein name, I’m happy to help, if the Belgians said so first.
You can elect to have your stone delivered ~flat as produced by Belgium, or made convex as produced with this tool; if you choose the latter, I’ll need a day or two to shape it for you. Because of the size, I’d recommend and endorse to shape the stone so that it has a ~6.5’Ø down the 130mm length, and a ~25’Ø across the 70mm width. This will allow you to set your razors with the spine and edge flush to the stone and then finish them either with a pasted strop of some sort, a flat/hard/fine type of finisher such as this tool (which will create a flat-type bevel apex), or by putting a layer or two of tape on the spine of your razor, and adding several laps of water-only use on the shaped coticule, affording an apex that’s curved but also durable enough for repeated shaving. There are, indeed, razors that can do just fine versus a beard with a concaved bevel shaped to a ~6.5’Ø wheel all the way through, but they’re few and far between; most razors, even from excellent brands, are better served by a compound bevel shape. For that matter, the razors that can hold up to beards over and over and have such an aggressive concavity on the apex could benefit from a compound shape where the rear (spine side) of the bevel was even shorter shaped; they all do best with a compound shape, and that’s why back in the glory days of the Pike Hard Arkansas wheel the master grinder or local sharpening expert made a compound bevel in stages, all without having the spine flush to the little wheel even once! We don’t have that option today, but these compound concave bevels shaped via something like this is the next best option.
