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I discovered last night that my spyderco medium bench hone is in need of lapping, and am sad because that is every spyderco owners nightmare. Supposedly, they are guaranteed flat from the factory and arent supposed to need honing for a long while, but it looks like I may be an exception.
If any of you have any suggestions or tips on how to get this done and over with, I'd be much obliged :)
Spyderco says that if the stone is lapped it will ruin it. I suggest you lap one side only and leave the other as is. I have a set of those done in that fashion and personally I don't like either side but that is another thread. :) If you have a DMT XX you will be glad that you do from what I've heard about lapping those bad boys. :gl:
Spyderco does guarantee your hone to be flat. If it is not, then they will replace it for free and you will not need to lap it!
If you lap it I think you will find it loses some cutting speed, i.e. it will be smoother and slower cutting. My experience with mediums is that they lose cutting speed as they wear out. Lapping it would be like wearing it out all at once.
Some people lap fines and ultrafines to make them finer, but on a medium that makes less sense to me.
send it back if its not flat.
If you lap it it will lose alot of its grit and cutting speed on that side, but thats not really a bad thing, a lapped spyderco med seems like its around 4000 grit, plus or minus a thousand or so. Using one side unlapped and one side lapped is a good idea, thats what I do.
They aren't as bad to lap as the fine and xfine hones.
Does anybody have any experience with replacing a spyderco hone?
Spederco hones are flat from the factory to THEIR specification, i.e-within such-and-such tolerance.
I had a fine, and it was unacceptably "flat", there was definitely undulations to the surface. Perhaps they were within the spec? If I had sent it back, I may have recieved the same thing again.
I lapped it on my precision granite plate with sandpaper, and then 5um Alo2 lapping film, and it was then FLAT. the finish the fine gave me was similar to my DMT EE, and since I prefered the DMT, I sold the Spydy.
I am thinking about getting the UF though.....:hmmm: