Quote Originally Posted by sharptonn View Post
There you have it!

This is an interesting subject. Seems a 325 DMT is wholly recommended for flattening and maintenance of synthetic hones, yet is WAY too rough for the task until it has evened out to the smallest diamonds. Something smoother should be recommended to new guys using a diamond plate for this purpose?
A thought?
Might not be bad advice to start with an Atoma 400 or a 600 grit plate. But it seems to me the minimal learning curve for the DMT 325 doesn't mean we should shy away from it either. It doesn't take all that much to break in a DMT properly. A few laps with a hard tool (I used a chisel) then flattening out a Norton 1K was about all the break in I needed. Even if you didn't break it in properly, it wouldn't be all that bad to chase your DMT with 320 sand paper to smooth things out a bit further before progressing. Probably still more economical too, because you'd use a single sheet as opposed to several sheets. And I still chase the 325 with 600 grit sand paper anyway.

Kinda makes me think that rather than buying sand paper, I should be buying diamond plates...