Hello,

I've spent the last two weekends trying to sandpaper lap my norton 4k/8k. Per the instructions it came with, I have used norton 240grit and norton 800 grit w/d sandpaper. The paper was wet and the stone soaked properly.

The lapping process went just fine, and it's nice and flat on both sides. I followed the advice I've read here and gave it a good brushing before swapping the grits over under running water, but...

The 4k side went just fine, but the 8k side definitely has some grit stuck in it. As per what other people have described here, it feels perfectly smooth (almost like glass), but when I run my test razor over it, it hits small rough spots or actually catches. When I look at the stone, I can see a couple of small brown spots (a tiny grain, which would be otherwise invisible other than being against the yellow background). It seems to catch on those areas, and then leaves long marks on the stone that look like pencil marks as the razor moves over them. For a time, I thought that it looked like the pencil marks from the lapping coming up out of the stone. I've re-sanded it down again and removed those, but more appeared yesterday in different areas.

Now, I'm wondering whether or not I can recover this by going up to a higher grit to sand it back, and then higher again to finish? Or once it's having this problem, do I need to get a norton flattening hone or a DMT D8C to really fix it up?

The DMT'S cost over twice as much in Australia as they do in the US, so I'll have to get one shipped out (I've seen them locally for $135). I could get a norton flattening stone for less of course, but given that I've spend about $30 on sandpaper already, I'm thinking I should just cut my losses and get a DMT if you guys think I can't fix it by changing sandpaper grit.

I'm only going to use the stone to refresh my daily shavers, so if the norton stone would be more cost effective, then I'd be interested to hear about that. I've read that the norton flattening stone needs to be lapped as well, but I'm not sure if that's 100% correct. If it does, then the DMT would no doubt be the way to go (I don't want to get into laparama).

regards,

craby