Thread: First time honing

For magnification you can find loupes on Amazon. Best to find a lighted loupe at around 30x. That's a good middle ground.

For your stones I would flatten and lap them. I thought the same as you but I have recieved many good quality stones that were not quite flat and would not have works well. And lapping them will produce many times a smoother stone surface. Best example are the new surfaces of the norton 4/8k stones are gritty at first and need to be flattened and lapped before first use.