Thread: Lapping Methods

Howard,

I often dream about scratch marks. My wife says she'd rather I had an affair instead of thinking about sharpening all the time...

I use a double sided 400/1000 grit diamond plate. Bought it just for lapping, since it probably changes the grit over time.

Mac

ok i must be really cheap i just use a glass cutting board and 400/800/1500 grit paper seems to work well.

Not cheap - frugal.

If you are just touching up 1 or 2 of your personal straight razors, you are not going to need such heavy duty equipment. And if it works for you and you are satisfied with the results, then it must be alright.

i only have one barber hone right now so i i go into deeper then we will see lol. but it seems that alot of folks also use heavy glass i may go that route when i get serious lol

D8XX and D8C, kept wet.

I like Carbide powders directly on glass. Papers allow more play than I like. Also I can use a big a$$ piece of glass. Its all over pretty quick

I've gone from sandpaper on glass to a Atoma 400 grit diamond plate, which was a big improvement and a it creates a lot less of a mess.

For 28 years, I had a Swaty barber hone and didn't know it needed to be lapped. When I found the Internet shaving forums last year, I bought a Norton 4K/8K and lapped it with wet/dry abrasive paper on the kitchen counter. I immediately got grit embedded in the 8K side and bought a Norton flattening stone.

Since then, I've picked up three coticules and a Chinese 12K, which I lap on abrasive paper. I recently realized that the kitchen counter wasn't flat (wasn't even stone, I guess I'm not the brightest bulb in the chandelier) so I switched to a plate glass coffee table. By chance, I found out that the Norton flattening stone wasn't flat anymore (if it ever was). I flattened a coticule on it (I had a lot to remove) and then went back to the glass table to smooth it and found that the coticule was higher in the middle than the sides (flattening stone was dished). Is it possible that the coticule dished the Norton flattening stone? In any case, I also brought the flattening stone to the glass table so I think it's reasonably flat now.

So that's my story. Does anybody care?

In that case, yes.

Don't flatten one hone with another.
We did that with 60 x 80 cm lithos in school and ended up with all dished ones. Great joy, LOL