Description
Talk about a SKU you’ll *NEVER* see on The River of Fakes and Fake Reviews!
This is a #10 Belgian coticule bout (“bout” = polygon), bonded to slate. Its ~140mm “length” has been shaped to an aggressive ~6.5’Ø, with a ~25’Ø affect moving across its “width” which peaks around 83mm or so at that middle area of the polygon. You can use this to shape a razor or other fine knife’s bevel by moving with the edge perpendicular to the stone ‘length’, and then refine that edge by facing the razor 90° to the first step. Use the longest facet as a visual target, not the various angles on the stone; move the edge parallel to this facet for the most bevel-cutting, and move perpendicular to this facet for the longest imaginary wheel (and most action at the apex).
I suspect, but cannot prove, that it is a “La Dressante” stone; I suppose it could be what they call a “hard La Grise’, but I doubt that given the thickness free of any lines/visual cueues. Its surface is glassy and hard, and while it may look blazingly fast, at least on plain water that it is not so…it is OK for plain water speed, but today’s modern soft “La Veinette” will be faster. They’re just never as physically hard anymore as this stone is.
Cutting speed with slurry, however, is quite high. This stone is more about combining speed with fineness; the minimum fineness and sharpening speed combination it imparts is excellent.
My own preference for a convex coticule, unequivocally, leans toward much softer La Grises and to a lesser extent any soft Veinette is also great. But there will always be those ardent and myopically assured folks that see harder coticules as superior whetstones, and that might have been true in the Victorian Era…but you must remember, the area where they fetch these rocks is several miles long and the little squiggles of value will vary a lot over that mileage, it isn’t as if the historical miners all had simultaneous open access to the paydirt, they got what they got based on land rights and from where they dug, same as today, and all of it is millions of years old. I’m not buying “hard coticules are better coticules” – all I would concur to is that “with rare exceptions, hard coticules are glassier coticules”. Glassy feedback is terrific in natural whetstones, but in a convex whetstone, I do find that it requires tremendous motor skills to make the most of, the soft mushy stones are the ones that are super forgiving when you’re balancing your weight of action on a smaller contact patch of razor. But to each their own. This is an extremely nice coticule that will resist wear quite well.
The little slurry stone that’s included has been shaped a bit to be the opposite form as the bench stone. You can use it to generate a slurry on the first step and shaping your razor will be quick. Align the little stone’s longest facet with the longest facet on the bench stone, and you’ll feel their shapes couple.
