Originally Posted by
Utopian
You WILL need to prep your DMT plate. Though it is "flat," not all of the peaks of its diamonds are the same height. IF they were, then you would get a relatively uniform surfacing of the hone by the diamond plate. Because a few diamonds will be a little bit higher, you will find that when you lap the hone you will find a lot of scratches in the hone.
The way to remove those aberrantly high diamonds is to rub a chisel or the shaft of a screwdriver over the diamond plate. The high diamonds will catch the brunt of the force of the steel passing over them and will be removed more likely than worn down. Regardless of how it works, prepping the plate this way will make it work much better with less scratching.