Thread: lapping a hone

I know from my experience with sharpening plane blades that many woodworkers lap their wetstones with a stone of a different grit. For instance, I have a 1000x, 4000x, and 8000x stones that are all single-grit stones. It is a common practice in wood working to rub say the 8000 and 1000 together to lap them and get them flat. Any reason (other than the fact that many here use combo stones) that this will not work for razor sharpening stones?

Well, if you try and lap the stone with a softer stone you will lap your lapping stone right? Yes you would use a stone with a harder material or at least the same grit but then if you used the same grit that would lap both stones. I use a shapton lapping plate and use the medium grit media to lap and the extra fine to polish.

I lap my 8k and 15k shaptons together. Seems to work fine.

if they are both synthetic waterstones they should lap each other though, right?

I've recently started lapping my 4K and 8K combo on my 1K Norton. It seems to polish and flatten the 4K and 8K stones nicely, although I'm not sure it's doing much to flatten the 1K.

It's an experiment, but I'm liking it so far.

Josh

No reason at all not to do that! In fact, it's what I do every day of the week when I use my DMT Coarse continuous diamond stone to lap my coticules prior to shipping. In that case you're using about a 325 grit stone to lap an 8000 grit stone and the result is the coticule purrs like velvet. You can also use the same grit to lap a stone. The problem I find is not so much in the size grit but in the loading of the stone with swarf which happens quickly and then prevents further lapping until you wash it away.

I lap my 4K and 8K with the 1K but it is mostly for cleaning and surface "refreshing". For serious lapping I use either sandpaper or a diamond hone.

No reason at all you couldn't do it like that. Personally, I don't do it as I fear contamination of the stone and don't want the extra wear on any of my other stones. I lap exclusively on a DMT Continuous Diamond Coarse hone. It's flat and the coticules and blues come out purring.