Thread: Lapping a Norton Lapping Plate

Gentlemen,

Friday afternoon is upon us (at least in the Western Hemisphere... for those of you in the Eastern Hemisphere, I hope your Friday was awesome!!), and a weekend of beer, grilling, enjoying friends and honing new acquisitions is before me. In layman's terms, I get to drink, play with fire, act a fool and play with sharp things for TWO WHOLE DAYS!!!

I've had good success in honing several blades up, however, I still kinda feel like something is off just a bit. Being new to honing, I haven't been able to identify exactly what yet. With that said, I plan to start eliminating variables one by one until the cosmic tumblers align and it all clicks into place.

For background, I have the Norton 220/1k and 4k/8k set with the Norton lapping plate, as well as a no name double sided barber's hone and a Genco barber's hone. I have lapped them all at least well enough that I'm getting decent shave ready edges, but again, something still feels off. I hope to get a DMT325 in the future to use (instead of the cheap, tiny Harbor Freight one I have now), but alas, SWMBO has emphatically said no.

In order to be as meticulous and controlled as possible, I began creating a list of variables to eliminate, and alas, realized that while I had lapped my waterstones, I had never actually lapped the lapping plate.

From the searching I did here, I know it can be done on wet/dry sandpaper, but I can't seem to find the grit. I'm assuming that the plate is somewhere around 220, so going below that would probably work?

Also, and more importantly, I know when lapping the stones to draw out my grid and so forth to tell how flat the stones are, but do you do the lapping plate the same way? My gut says yes, but I figured I'd ask to be sure.

Thanks in advance!!

I may be wrong, I was wrong once before, but IIRC the norton lapping plate is 120 grit. I'm sure someone will correct me if I am (shudder) wrong.