Anyone have one?? At what stage in the honing Progression are these used? Are they even worth talking about?? Sellers pics. I just acquired one, for $20.50. The pics aren't too good, so I'm sure it will need to be lapped. The seller says it makes a blueish slurry, and he sees garnet specks under magnification. It's around 7x1.5x.5 inches. i figured, what the heck, I'll try it. Maybe it will fill a gap in my progression somewhere.
I have quite a few of them. Not stand alone, but either on the back of the yellow Coticule or part of a natural combo. The slurry is more a milky purple to me and very unique. I tend to use mine after a bevel setter and then flip it over to the yellow. I have also set a bevel with one. Never finished on one though.
I have one I purchased from Glen many years ago. I was actually just using it today. They are around 6k grit, with some variance between stones. They make a milky pinkish slurry. It's an intermediate stone. A slow bevel setter, but too coarse for a razor finishing stone. I use mine for my French chef knives before going to a Welsh dragon's tongue slate (10k -ish) for the finished edge. Stropping adds any additional refinement needed. I'm not looking for a shaving edge on my kitchen knives though. I've also used it on my Rolls Razor blades during the "refurbishment" process. Same two stones as above, same order, but a much lighter touch and fewer strokes and followed by the Rolls's own hone and strop.
I’ve set bevels before on Belgian Blues. A little on the slower side but I would say on par with Welsh Slate as far as cutting power.
Yeah I have one left... I got it from Howard many years ago, 8x3 beautiful stone, I doubt I have used it in 10 years, I gotta agree about them being similar to Slates, they are all over the place with cutting power and with Face feel as a finisher Some are Pre-Finishers; some will finish better than you would expect .. If it isn't finishing well treat it like an Arkie, burnish it smooth, and switch to Glycerin / Smith's water-soluble solution / Ballistol and see if that does it.. Honestly, they are not bad Stones but as they say, way too many better choices to spend time with hehehe
As Glen said, they are not bad stones. They just tend to get overshadowed by other stones. A bit too hard and slow for a fast bevel setter, but too coarse for a great finishing stone, unless you play with some surface compounds to add some slickness. For knives and chisels, it's an outstanding hone, and is probably my most used hone overall at home. It lessens time spent on my finishing hones considerably. I do like that it's soft enough to flatten on my hone flattener (Arkansas stones tend to be too hard for the one I have).
I have an 8x3 that I got from Jarrod about a decade ago, before I made him take back a used, defective Tulip 3, lol. What Ryan said is a good summary, a nice midgrit but not very fast. Surprisingly they can make a great finish on bi-metal knives.
This is why I think people get such mixed results from BBW. The stone on the right is your bog standard typical BBW you see 99% of the time. Garnet size is all over the place, from large to smallish. Vein is presumed to be from 'la grise,' due to the white inclusions. The matrix holding the garnets is fairly soft, and it will kick out garnets into the slurry. The stone in the middle is what people who are looking for a 'good' BBW look for. Fast, and loaded with consistent sized garnets. This makes up 1% of BBW. Unknown vintage vein. The matrix is hard enough to hold the garnets in place for quite a while. The stone on the left is that rare .01% of BBW that makes a fantastic finisher. The garnets are so small they are just about invisible. You can see one clearly about a third of the way up from the bottom of the picture on the right hand side, and there's others scattered throughout the picture. It's the kind of stone you find once in your life, and is that rare BBW finisher. This is a vintage 'la veinette,' and is an exceptionally fine grained stone, even for that vein, which routinely produces finishing quality razor stones. The matrix here is fairly soft, and releases garnets readily, but they are small enough that they won't impact the edge quality, even in a heavy slurry. All pictures were taken using the same magnification, using a crappy little generic Chinese 1500x USB scope. (Which is probably 50x to 400x in reality, with a .3 megapixel camera. I would estimate the magnification above is in the 75x to 100x range). Also, I'm guessing on the percentages. They are probably kind of accurate. A guy who owns stone type #1 is going to say that BBW is not a finishing stone. The guy who owns stone type #3 is going to say BBW is absolutely a finishing stone. They are both right. Don't try to kid yourself though. The vast majority of BBW isn't really razor quality stone. Edit: after further reflection and research, I would say that the BBW on the back of that vintage 'la Veinette' is closer in character to an extra fine 'Rouge du Salm' than a true BBW, even though Rouge du Salm/La Lorraine is a different layer entirely, and is never part of a natural coticule. Several layers can exhibit this type of BBW, though no currently mined veins do.
