Thread: "Shapton Glass" In Search of the Perfect Edge

Originally Posted by Chrisl

Hi NightLad. No apologies necessary; click on the following link for just one retail outlet for: DMT Products

The D8C is widely used for lapping natural and most manufactured whetstones. It's regarded as being 325 grit. This would be too coarse to use for razor honing in and of itself, but excells as a flat lapping plate and is inexpensive. Although it looks like a no frills cheap hunk of metal, it's a quality rugged product.

Chris L

I tried them and various ebay opportunities but the cost for customs was out of line. It ended up being cheaper to buy it in Canada from Lee Valley or Woodcrafter via their Boreder free shopping http://www.woodcraft.com/family.aspx?FamilyID=226.
Kind regards,

My Shapton is here!!!

I am stoked. Hopefully lapping will be trivial.

- Bob

Originally Posted by Soopercat

DMT are various types of Diamond bench stones, in the states they have more options in style but the results are the same.

It's true the D8* series is harder to find for us Canadians than the ones that Lee Valley sells, but they are available from Howard who ships to Canada via USPS and he is a Canadian friendly dealer. A D8C should run about $65.00 including shipping to Canada, a far sweeter deal than getting one of those plastic jobs from Lee Valley. I'm sure those plastic/mesh stones work fine, but I don't like the feel of them when honing tools and they really do need a holder which adds further to the price.

Regards

Kaptain "Howard's the man for me" Zero

All these references to the D series units make me want to return to those thrilling days of yesteryear when I got to put a D7E Cat through its paces and drooled with the anticipation of trying a D8H and D9G. It's wonderful what one can do with a few hundred horsepower and tracks. Sorry. The D's just got to me.

I would not want to say who tried this But I can say through that guy's experience that a Norton flatting stone is NOT a good choice for lapping the 16k..... He did tell me that after his experience that the roughness was fixed by a round of 1000-2000 on a glass plate.....

Lapping is clearly an interesting challenge,

If the grit of a Shapton 16k is .92 microns or .00003622047"

on the DMT 1200
The manufacturer aims for a surface tolerance of ±0.003", but you can be safe in assuming a tolerance of ±0.005".

Lee valley granite surface plate is
0.0001"

Shaptons DRLP is 3.5 microns or
0.000137"

To me this is saying that despite the cool factor I can't actually prep my hones beyond about 3.5 microns.

But that doesn't actually make any sense either as I know my 12k and my swaty do a far better job than my 8k.

So can someone please unconfuse me?

Thanks,
Bob

Bob, I'm not quite sure what you are asking.

First off, grit size has nothing to do with surface flatness.

Second, stated flatness tolerances are exactly that, a given hone, surface plate etc. will be within the quoted total deviance range of x thousands or x micron from perfectly flat which would be 0 deviance. That means it could be less, but never more than what is stated, and most samples will be less (based on the proven Bell curve) than the quoted maximum, provided quality control is up to snuff of course.

All this flatness business amounts to little more than bragging rights in so far as honing razors go. An 8" long hone that is off by 0.001" from perfect flatness will not perform any worse than a perfect one for razor sharpening due to the miniscule size of the razors bevel. As the size of whatever you are honing becomes larger, such a variation *can* begin to affect the outcome. Shapton offers their high quality reference plates to ensure a very quick progression through the grit sizes when honing those large bevels as seen on Japanese plane blades and the like... those bevels can be 1/2" deep and 2" + wide... if there were a 0.001" hollow in that bevel from honing on a 1K hone that was slightly out, it would take you forever to remove that hollow using the next grit size, normally a 4K hone. As you would progress up in grit size, it would just get worse as those uber fine hones don't remove much material at all... they just polish the surface.

There is also the issue of the user. Using these hones and reference plates or flattening stones by hand will often introduce more unevenness from incorrect use than the tolerances of the equipment would indicate.

In the end, you want to have all your hones that you would normally use in progression to be of similar shape... if all your hones were dished in the center by 3 thousands of an inch, it would not normally be a problem as each hone is the same. Where you run into issues is when one hone is dished, the next one is crowned, the third one is skewed etc. and even then it simply means you might have to add some more time on the later hones as they have to remove any minor deviations from the previous hone.

I hope this is clearer than it seems to me right now.... my head hurts.

Extreme accuracy has it's place in high end optics, measuring devices, laser optics, astronomical telescopes etc. but those are very specialized endeavors where minute errors are magnified many thousands of times until they become glaring faults.


Regards

Christian

Originally Posted by kaptain_zero

It's true the D8* series is harder to find for us Canadians than the ones that Lee Valley sells, but they are available from Howard who ships to Canada via USPS and he is a Canadian friendly dealer. A D8C should run about $65.00 including shipping to Canada, a far sweeter deal than getting one of those plastic jobs from Lee Valley. I'm sure those plastic/mesh stones work fine, but I don't like the feel of them when honing tools and they really do need a holder which adds further to the price.

Regards

Kaptain "Howard's the man for me" Zero

I enclosed the link to both in my second reference http://www.woodcraft.com/family.aspx?FamilyID=226
re woodcraft Borderfree shopping. My old holder cost $1.49 at Canadian tire (PVC non-slip shelf liner) as per Lynn's video. I now own enough stones and razors to warrant the upgrade to a Stone Pond. Any suggestions?

Kind regards,

Originally Posted by kaptain_zero

Bob, I'm not quite sure what you are asking.

First off, grit size has nothing to do with surface flatness.

Second, stated flatness tolerances are exactly that, a given hone, surface plate etc. will be within the quoted total deviance range of x thousands or x micron from perfectly flat which would be 0 deviance. That means it could be less, but never more than what is stated, and most samples will be less (based on the proven Bell curve) than the quoted maximum, provided quality control is up to snuff of course.

All this flatness business amounts to little more than bragging rights in so far as honing razors go. An 8" long hone that is off by 0.001" from perfect flatness will not perform any worse than a perfect one for razor sharpening due to the miniscule size of the razors bevel. As the size of whatever you are honing becomes larger, such a variation *can* begin to affect the outcome. Shapton offers their high quality reference plates to ensure a very quick progression through the grit sizes when honing those large bevels as seen on Japanese plane blades and the like... those bevels can be 1/2" deep and 2" + wide... if there were a 0.001" hollow in that bevel from honing on a 1K hone that was slightly out, it would take you forever to remove that hollow using the next grit size, normally a 4K hone. As you would progress up in grit size, it would just get worse as those uber fine hones don't remove much material at all... they just polish the surface.

There is also the issue of the user. Using these hones and reference plates or flattening stones by hand will often introduce more unevenness from incorrect use than the tolerances of the equipment would indicate.

In the end, you want to have all your hones that you would normally use in progression to be of similar shape... if all your hones were dished in the center by 3 thousands of an inch, it would not normally be a problem as each hone is the same. Where you run into issues is when one hone is dished, the next one is crowned, the third one is skewed etc. and even then it simply means you might have to add some more time on the later hones as they have to remove any minor deviations from the previous hone.

I hope this is clearer than it seems to me right now.... my head hurts.

Extreme accuracy has it's place in high end optics, measuring devices, laser optics, astronomical telescopes etc. but those are very specialized endeavors where minute errors are magnified many thousands of times until they become glaring faults.


Regards

Christian

My experience with using the D8C as my initial lapping plate and now the Shapton GDLP supports your valued information, Christian. Early on in my HAD induced bender on wanting to get my stones as flat as possible, thankfully I realized that .001" vs. .5 micron flat in relation to the razor's edge really means jack squat in that the flatness or lack thereof won't mean any greater improvement in the SHAVE. It did make sense to me however, before I went on my Shapton jag that having all of my stones as consistently flat between them would improve consistency and speed between one stone and the other. Maybe I'm dreaming, but I've found this to be true. My edges seem to be "stable" from one ceramic stone to another. Before that with my D8C lapped Norton and my natural stones I would get more of the "what the *@#$ is going on here?!" feeling when I'd have a great bevel and would seem to lose it or at least have the next finer stone seem to reverse the progress from the prior stone before it got better. The theory I have is that if the first stone was off from the second and the second off in a different way from the third, then my blade was having to come around in correction before improving. Again, this was my perception, so maybe I'm just off on this. I very well could be.

Christian, with all your valued knowledge (I consider you a resource and am very grateful that you've been in on this post) we need you to jump into the Shapton pool! Come on.......you know you want to.

Chris L

NO NO NO NO NO

I cannot afford to have ShaptonAD......please stop talking about them. I want ......