Thread: How can I prevent my truing stone from chewing up my high grit stones?

My honing progression is a King 1K waterstone, followed by a Norton 4k/8k combination synthetic waterstone. My truing stone is a 120 grit Pride stone.

It seems to work great for the King 1k, it looks perfect and flat with no visible scratches or grooves in it. When I brought it up to my norton, this started happening:



It seems to be carving grooves into the 4k side of my norton. I'm not really sure if this is grit leftover from my 1k, I suppose it's much more likely to be just grit from my 120 grit flattening stone.

What can I do to avoid this happening?

Nortons are very soft stones & it's easy to embed loose grit particles in them especially if you use too much pressure. Sometimes a Scotchbrite pad or rubbing stone will shift them but I think any 120 grit medium will groove your finer stones.

120 grit is very abrasive, most flattening hones fall into the 400 to 600 grit range.
You could use 600grit wet n dry to smooth your Norton out then use your 1k King after to maintain your Norton.

A good investment is a diamond hone to flatten and maintain your hones, you don't have to spend a lot of money though.

I use a 400 grit Atoma. If this leaves a few ugly scratches I then use a finer plate, (followed by a nagura if I feel the need). You can certainly buy lower cost diamond plates, but for me Atomas are the biz.

A 400 /1k diamond plate from Amazon for under 50 bucks is what Ive used for years. As said, 120 is pretty darn course for any fine grit stones.

But if you dont want to buy a diamond plate I think Oz has the right idea.

Do your heavy lapping with the coarse plate and then use a finer diamond plate or wet dry if you don't want to spend on the plate. Cheap diamond plate are available but an atoma is a much better value and will last much longer. For synthetics I didn't find lapping finer than 600 to be useful although many do.

Start lapping always on the finest stone first and work to the coarsest.

If you start at the coarsest the coarse grit will contaminate the finer stones.

I have a lapping stone, and found that plain ol' wet n dry paper on a flat surface, under running water, to work best.

If its bad, I'll start at 400 grt. and progress to 1000 to finish. But I mainly hone on Nats, so there's no problems with dishing once they've been flattened the first time.

Did you flatten your lapping stone..? They need it too, new outta the box.

Again...wet n dry, or a diamond plate. Always under running water.

Originally Posted by markbignosekelly

120 grit is very abrasive, most flattening hones fall into the 400 to 600 grit range.
You could use 600grit wet n dry to smooth your Norton out then use your 1k King after to maintain your Norton.

A good investment is a diamond hone to flatten and maintain your hones, you don't have to spend a lot of money though.

Creative idea to use the 1k as a flattening stone, I don't see why you couldn't.

Originally Posted by STF

Start lapping always on the finest stone first and work to the coarsest.

If you start at the coarsest the coarse grit will contaminate the finer stones.

Good point.

Originally Posted by outback

I have a lapping stone, and found that plain ol' wet n dry paper on a flat surface, under running water, to work best.

If its bad, I'll start at 400 grt. and progress to 1000 to finish. But I mainly hone on Nats, so there's no problems with dishing once they've been flattened the first time.

Did you flatten your lapping stone..? They need it too, new outta the box.

Again...wet n dry, or a diamond plate. Always under running water.

Did you just take a big piece of it and glue it down to a piece of glass? How did you do it?

Similar to Mark, I only use my lapping plate to true up my 1k stones and below.
Thereafter I use the preceding grits to true up the next grit levels.
So I use the 1k to maintain my 4/8 combo, the 4 to do my 10k and my 8k to do my 12k and up.
Pencil grid for reference along the way and copious amounts of water, and sometimes a few drops of detergent.
Seems to work for me, but I don’t do a lot of honing anymore now that everything is where I like it.
Good luck.