Peet Cottle Nasal Rasp, Flat Diamond Coated Dorsal Rasp

What a Peet Cottle nasal rasp is

There is a moment in a dorsal reduction when the profile is right in the mirror and wrong under the fingertip. The hump has gone, the osteotomies have been made, and what is left along the top of the nose is a flat but rough plane with small ridges where each instrument passed. Thin skin will telegraph every one of those ridges within a year. The Peet Cottle nasal rasp is the instrument that takes them out.

It belongs to the Cottle school of septorhinoplasty, where the principle was always to remove as little as possible and to keep what was removed smooth. The flat face is the point of the design: it bridges across the dorsum rather than riding into it, so the high spots come down first and the low spots are left alone. That is the opposite of what a convex face does, and it is why a flat rasp is the one that flattens.

Key design features

A flat face, and why it matters

Lay a flat abrasive on an uneven surface and only the raised parts touch it. Keep pulling and the raised parts come down until the whole face is in contact, at which point the surface is flat and the rasp stops biting. The instrument tells the surgeon when to stop, which is a property no curved or crowned face has.

Diamond grit rather than teeth

The grit is bonded to the steel, not cut into it. A toothed rasp on a thin nasal bone wants to bite, skip and lever, and a lever on a bone two millimeters thick is a fracture nobody planned. Bonded grit cannot bite. It removes a few microns a stroke at a rate that hardly changes with hand pressure, so depth is judged by counting passes.

Straight shank, direct pull

The shank runs in line with the handle, so the stroke is a straight pull toward the surgeon with no twisting moment at the wrist. Through an open approach or a wide intercartilaginous incision that is the fastest and the most controllable stroke there is. It is also the reason this pattern is the one that is bought first and the curved patterns are bought second.

The handle

Flat and wide, held in the palm like a file. The working force comes from the forearm, and the handle is sized so the hand does not have to grip hard to keep the face flat against the bone. A rasp that needs a tight grip is a rasp that will tilt on a long pass.

Which Peet rasp to order

This page is the flat straight pattern. We carry no length or width options on it, so the choice is between the three faces in the family rather than between sizes, and the table says plainly which page to buy instead if the flat face is not what you need.

Where it is used

It is a nose instrument, and on this pattern the requests are overwhelmingly dorsal.

What it abrades, and what it must leave alone

What a finishing rasp must not touch is as much a part of the specification as what it removes.

How it compares with the other finishing surfaces

Four finishing surfaces exist and only one of them is this. The comparison is worth reading before buying, because the wrong choice here shows up on the patient.

Materials and finish

Every Peet Cottle nasal rasp we make is cut from high quality medical grade stainless steel. The steel itself is made to a German specification. We do not publish a grade number, because the number on a certificate tells a surgeon nothing about how an abrasive face holds up after fifty autoclave cycles, and the answer to that is in the finish rather than in the alloy.

The face is bonded and the body is passivated and satin finished, so there is no glare under the light, no plating to chip and nothing brazed to come loose. The grit is the wearing part: as it ages the face feels smoother rather than rougher, and a face that feels smooth has stopped cutting. That is the point to replace it, not when it looks worn.

Caring for it

Rinse it under running water before the case is cleared. Bone paste dries hard in bonded grit and it is the one thing that ends these instruments early; once it has set, no ultrasonic cycle lifts all of it.

Then a soft nylon brush along the face, never across it, never wire. Enzymatic cleaner, ultrasonic, deionized water rinse, dry fully, autoclave at 134 degrees Celsius. Store it with the face touching nothing. Grit marks whatever it rubs against, and whatever it rubs against polishes the grit.

Ordering and wholesale

The Peet Cottle nasal rasp is made in our own workshop and sold direct, which is why the price sits where it does against the catalogue houses. Order one for a single set, or in quantity for a hospital list or a distributor line; we do OEM work under your own brand and your own item numbers, and we will hold a run to your pattern rather than ours if you send a sample. Stock items ship from our own workshop. Backorder items take 10 to 12 working days to make. Every instrument carries a three year replacement warranty against manufacturing defects. Production is controlled under an ISO 13485 quality management system.

Frequently asked questions

What is a Peet Cottle nasal rasp used for?

Levelling the bony dorsum at the end of a rhinoplasty. The hump is already down by the time it is picked up; its job is to turn the rough plane the osteotome and the coarse rasp leave into a smooth one that will not be visible through the skin later. It is a finishing instrument, not a reduction instrument.

Why is the Peet Cottle rasp face flat rather than curved?

Because a flat abrasive only touches the high spots. It takes those down until the whole face makes contact and then stops cutting, which makes the instrument self limiting on a flat surface. A curved or crowned face keeps cutting wherever it is put, which is what you want on a hollow and not what you want on a dorsum.

Is a Peet Cottle rasp the same as a Peet rasp?

The same pattern, written differently. Catalogues list it as Peet, Peet Cottle and Peet Aufricht, and Google’s own answer opens by saying so. On our catalogue the three are separate item codes because the faces differ: this one is flat and straight, AO-07.03 offers four faces, and AO-09.08 is the curved glabellar pattern.

Can a Peet Cottle rasp remove a dorsal hump on its own?

It can, and it will take far longer than it should. A diamond face removes a few microns a stroke by design. On anything more than a small prominence, start with a tungsten carbide rasp or an osteotome and bring this one out for the last millimeter.

How should it be cleaned and sterilized?

Rinse immediately, brush along the face with soft nylon, enzymatic cleaner, ultrasonic, deionized water rinse, dry, then autoclave at 134 degrees Celsius. Never a wire brush and never a cross stroke across the grit, and store it so the face touches nothing.

Related products and categories

The rest of the Peet family and the rasp that does the heavy work first: Peet nasal rasp, diamond coated, four tip options, Peet Aufricht glabellar nasal rasp, curved for the nasal root, and Glabella nasal raspatory, tungsten carbide when periosteum has to be lifted rather than bone removed.

The full range sits in raspatories and saws, and the procedure tray it belongs to is in rhinoplasty instruments.