Hi,

I'm new to Neanderthal land, making a slow creep from powerville.

I've been reading the threads on sharpening stones, trying to figure out the best approach to take. I've used a water stone, oil stones and a diamond plate in the past, but my experience is limited. Aside from a semi-worn diamond plate, none of my other stones is large enough to use for sharpening plane blades. I'd like to choose one sharpening system and buy new stones for that system. I'm trying to figure out what system would suit me best. I expect to use the stones primarily for sharpening planes and chisels.

In one previous thread a number of members stated that flattening coarse water stones with a diamond plate will "chew up" the diamond plate. I've used wet/dry sandpaper on glass with water to flatten an 800 grit waterstone and it worked fine, though it's a bit messy. Assuming a coarse waterstone only needs to be used infrequently for grinding, I don't see using wet/dry sandpaper as a problem for flattening that stone. But, it would be more convenient to use a diamond plate to flatten medium and fine grit water stones since they are used more frequently. I'd appreciate recommendations for the minimum grit size water stones that you would flatten with a diamond plate witihout fear of significantly shortening the lifetime of the diamond plate. For purposes of this question let's consider two diamond plates, the Atoma 400 and the DMT duosharp coarse (325 grit).

Thanks.

Bob