Thread: Matrix Resin Bond Diamond Stones

Matrix Resin Bond Diamond Stones

Recently on the Hone of the Day forum, honing polished EDC knife bevels came up and turned to honing polishing small bevels on knives, that do not lend themselves to freehand honing.

Enter Diamond Matrix stones for the Edge Pro. I have been using an Edge Pro Apex for several years to hone/sharpen small EDC, small fixed blades, and even large fixed blades where perfectly even or polished bevels are required.

With in the last year Edge Pro has released a Diamond Matrix “stone”, a diamond grit imbedded in resin binder stone for the Edge Pro. There are other Diamond resin/epoxy impregnated stones that have been on the market for Knife Jig sharpeners, and even some bench stones.

These stones are pricy and until recently, not a lot of information was available for them, until I stumbled on a post in Blade Forums, (Edge Pro, Matrix Bonded Stones). In this thread started by the developer/maker, (Diemaker, David Martin), he reaches out to the Edge Pro community on Blade Forums for user input, testing recommendations and ideas from folks who actually are using the product, and then acting on the advice. What a novel idea!

In the Blade Forums thread, there is a lot of good info on DM stone prep, which is very different from traditional stone lapping. The “stones” are diamond grit, suspended in resin and of a proprietary mix/blend. The goal of DM stone prep is to remove microscopic amounts of resin/binder without removing or damaging the diamonds, exposing more of the diamonds, not “flattening” per say.

Because the diamonds are suspended in resin (for the EP DM stones), there is some “flex” and not as deep cutting, but still aggressive. As opposed to using deep cutting aggressive hard diamond plates. They recommend using lose 240 grit Aluminum Oxide to grind only the resin, not the diamonds.

These stones do not have any real application for razors, other than repair or initial bevel setting in the lower grits. As stated earlier, the goals of this sharpening are very different from honing a razor. None the less, it is interesting and perhaps, down the road this technology may have some application for razors. There is also some experimenting going on with CBN stones and turners rave about CBN precision ground wheels for turning lathe tools, which have been on the market for a few years now and pricy.

Martin, says he has not had any success making and using stones finer that 4k grit, though he does make a 6500 and 9000 grit stones, that he describes as finicky and work best on hard 60+ Rockwell hardness to polish without edge chipping and bevel scratching.

He recommends 4k as the honing limit and further polishing on paste. So, for razors edges that do not get straight and shaveable until 8k-ish. I don’t think these stones offer much for straight razor honing currently.

I purchased a set of EP DM stones in 650,1100, 2300 and 4000 grits. I will try honing on the 1100 to 4k to see what they do to a razor edge.

If you have experience with these or any of the other Diamond Matrix stones post your findings to this thread.

(Edge Pro Matrix resin bond diamond stones)