Thread: japanese water stones: flattening

what is the best way to flatten Japanese water stones?

What I find to work great on mine are Atoma diamond plates. I'll start with a 140 grit if needed, then go to a 400 and finish of with a 1200.
I used a DMT 325 for a while too, and that worked ok as well. That was a 325Grit diamond plate

A lot of guys use the USA dmt diamond plate but I think for Japanese waterstones the Japanese made Atoma diamond plate is probably what I would use ..... A diamond plate in any case, unless you wanted to go with sandpaper on a flat surface.

Whatever diamond plate you use, make sure to use it with plenty of water, preferably under running water.
Otherwise the slurry from the stone will eat out the diamonds from their seating.
Light pressure, let the diamonds do the work.

There is also the classic ways with 3 or 4 stones you swap around to make them all flat.

Soft stones like King and such it's usually enough to rub to together.

will sandpaper work good?

Originally Posted by dedox

will sandpaper work good?

Not the old flit type with paper backing but the wet and dry stuff works fine.
Put it wet on something dead flat and rub the stone in 8s.

okay, thanks for the good tips
sincerely
dedox

DMT / Atoma diamond plates have some disadvantages:
1) they are expensive
2) the surface they give is too rough for fine honing
3) there is a risk to wear a diamond plate too fast if you don't flush the slurry
4) there is a risk to embed the diamond particle into the stone so it could give horrible scratches when honing

So I'd prefer another way to flatten my stones. I simply use a glass sheet with some SiC slurry.
SiC is for Silicon Carbide ( http://www.leevalley.com/US/wood/pag...072,67174&ap=1 )
It is very cheap and give a better result.

There are thing even better than a glass. I have found artificial stone tile (quarzit) from german manufacturer. It works much faster than glass with the same SiC slurry because it's surface captures and holds the SiC grits.

When I need to get finer surface on the stone I take finer SiC grit ( 600 or 1000 ).
If I need to remove too much stock I take a coarser SiC grain ( 240 or 120 grit ).
I use a sequence of SiC grain like 120 -- 240 -- 600 -- 1200 to speedup the process and get very fine surface of the stone.
Of couse the glass sheet should be carefully flushed with water after each grit.

Originally Posted by dedox

will sandpaper work good?

Not so good. It is hard to get very flat surface on sandpaper.

I'll try that
thanks again
dedox

Lapping with loose grit on glass or any other flat surface is great because it's cheap and easy, but it's also a mess to clean up unless you have a good place to do it. A DMT may run you a few bucks (no idea off the top of my head, don't remember), but it's fast, clean, easy, and will last forever. If you do it under running water (like in a sink with a flat bottom), it's no biggie to have the faucet on low. My DMT lives in the dish rack.

I have never had a diamond embed in any hone, and I don't see how it could. If the stone were soft enough to have a diamond embed, I don't think it would a) rip out diamonds nor b) hold onto the diamond during lapping. If you think the scratches from a DMT are too deep, you can easily rub them out with a slurry stone, barber hone, etc. Again, any hone that's hard enough to hang onto the scratches is probably a hone you'll only lap once.