Thread: Lapping Shapton w/ DMT D8C

Originally Posted by kaptain_zero

Uhh... sorry, but that explanation did not clear things up for me.... There is a clear glass side and a white ceramic side to the Glass Shaptons... It is the white side that is the honing surface, the other "clear" side is only the glass base and you can see the identification marks through it as in the grit mesh and micron size.

If you were lapping the white side of the hone, I cannot help but think that if you spent that much time on one hone, you must have accidentally used the wrong DMT plate or there is something terribly wrong with your DMT such as virtually no diamond grit. For me it was a matter of a few minutes with a almost instant white slurry being developed as I lapped the hones. The Shapton 2000 grit took the longest, my Shapton 16000 grit took the least amount of time which is to be expected as the diamonds have better access to the binder as the finer hones have smaller sized grit.

Regards

Christian

lol


So I had always thought the side you could see the identifcation marks through was the side you honed on. Well I suppose my base is perfectly flat now.

Guess I'll give it another go, I thought the white side was the base.

Suppose if I had read the back of the 16k's package that came in cardboard I'd of seen that, the other three came in black boxes.

whew, now you can sharpen up some sh_teel much more easily

Honestly, that's quite an understandable mistake.... after all, they did name them "Glass Hones", didn't they? Glad we got that sorted out and I'm confident you'll find things going much better this time.

Regards

Christian

I assumed prior to purchasing my Shapton ceramic stones and at that point only seeing pictures, that the honing surface was the glass surface. In my mind, I assumed you'd hone on the side that indicated the grit size, etc. So +1....don't feel bad about making the mistake of lapping the wrong side of these stones.

Chris L

I was fortunate and had seen the shaptons in use before deciding to buy so i already knew the "secret"

as for lapping them... i used the gdlp... on a base in my sink with a trickle of cool water splashing down.

500, 1k, 2k, 3k, 4k, 6k, 8k, 16k, 30k.... took 65 minutes all together, marking them each twice and lapping smooth. the worst stones were the 6k and 1k, the easiest the 8k and 30k. all except the 6k were high on just the ends the 6k had a high spot near the middle as well.

I lapped the 200 on a d8c took about 5 minutes.


Yes i liked the knifeforums group buy!

Ah, I took a second go at it today and lapped the proper side of them. Took about an hour to do all four which included lapping each twice and then putting a slight angle on the very edge of each corner. Helps when you lap the proper side, my D8C is pretty worn out from lapping the glass side of them I worked up a bit of a sweat in the process too lol ... thought something was wrong with that. My DMT now has a bald spot near one of the ends. Guess at least it's broken in now for any future use on it taking out a large chip.