Thread: Why should I use powder to dress my stone?

I have to disagree with the fact that you only have to lap an ark once. I inherited a bunch of arks from my dad who had a sharpening business and several of them were bellied in the center. His business was mostly concentrated on saws and knives and not so much on razors although he did do some. Either way he never used the arcs on razors, only knives. Some of his stones were bellied like crazy. I had to flatten then lap every single one of them. Do yourself a favor and lap it if for no other reason than for the sake of taking that out of your mind.

Well, let me be a little bit more specific. In fairness he did not use them for razors, only knives and probably applied more pressure than you would with a razor. I do know though that he flattened his stones because I've seen him do it. One of his sharpening machines had a lapping wheel and he had various cans full of powders. I don't know that I saw him flatten these specific ones but he did flatten his stones. More to the point though some of his arks were visibly bellied which takes a lot because novaculite is so hard. Some of them though did not look bellied but when I lapped them you could see the belly at that point. Most of them had a pronounced X through the middle from the X stroke he used. So I guess the take away from that I'm trying to impress is you can look at a stone and it seems dead flat. You can even use a straight edge and it appears pretty much flat but once you put it on a lapping plate you can see that it is not. If you just buy some inexpensive lapping compound and a good flat hard surface and run it over it then you've removed that as an obstacle.