Is my diamond plate okay?

[David Weaver]

Robert, from the rest of us, the reality is with any of the coarse stones that they will eventually get after the electroplate on any of the diamond hones. The finer stones don't so much do it.

The shapton (and everything) favorite for a reasonable price is the atoma (buy it from japan if you ever do get the itch, that's where it's cheapest), but that doesn't mean that you have any reason not to use the diasharp or for that matter any reason to buy an atoma. If a shapton 320 eats a diasharp (in my experience, the 220 is very hard on pretty much any diamond plate), then it will also eat other plates (because of the coarse and aggressive abrasive).

If you do come to the conclusion that the plate is losing its plating too fast, you can switch over to loose abrasive (shaptons rip apart sandpaper) for the coarse stones (like below 700 grit ratings) and save the diasharp for the finer stones.

Shaptons lapping plates are no exception to eventually getting clapped out, unfortunately. The price in them appears to be for the flatness spec..and the brand name.

Cheap silicon carbide loose grit is fine if you end up going that route to keep the shapton 320 flat and its surface fresh and fast cutting.

[Winton Applegate]

It's nice to see the straight edge I use is still affordable. Pretty darn accurate but was able to improve it a skoch.
http://www.amazon.com/Steel-Rule-Rig...+straight+edge
That is what I enjoy about this forum though. People, most , here appreciate taking things one step at a time and doing things right in a methodical manner to produce the highest level of craftsmanship (craftspersonship).
and
then there are a few clowns to keep things lively and off balance.
With any luck I will fill both shoes from time to time. The Allen Edmands shop trekkers as well as the big floppy red whoopsy doodles.
Stay tuned.

[Winton Applegate]

Mike,
My name is Winton. Nice to talk with you.

"Dots" are lack of diamond

I agree you kind of get gipped out of as many diamonds but the "dots" are HOLES and the swarf goes down them and so does not build up and float the stone, or blade back/what have you, above the cutting surface. Why do I think this ? Were did I get this outlandish idea ? Well first and foremost using both styles of diamond plates. Second see the stone flatteneing stone; it has the groves in it to serve the same function.

One last reason I see for the holes is that since there are less cutting diamond points per square inch there is more force on each point and so they have a better chance to cut rather than skate. When attempting to sharpen a narrow chisel etc. this is kind of a negative but with a large blade or stone etc it can be a positive effect.
Details brutha
God is in the details.

[Winton Applegate]

I think DMT claimed that the interrupted surface on the dotted plates gave swarf somewhere to go. If you looked at them, however, they were at the same level as the rest of the diamond matrix after some use, if not initially.

I'm starting to see where the "Religion" thing comes in.
I must have got the only good one. Holes still holy.
: )
I rinse it under a running facet periodically while I use it. As I do all my stones. So the pores stay as open as possible. I'm not a big slurry builder kind of sharpener. Cleanliness is next to (Ok I'll stop).
Not warm, not cold, but just right so as not to shock the stones.
There's that "prissiness" sneaking in there. Did you all see it fly by ? It's lurking over there in the corner. God help us if it decides to move against us.


Pardon the toooo many photos. I was changing angle; hopefully one or another turns out on your end. Obviously I haven't visited the Camera forum here. Is there one ? I could benefit from the experience for sure.Holy.jpgDiamond Plate.jpgBatman.jpgTaking Pencil in hand for a good cause.JPG

[Winton Applegate]

. I'm not designing space shuttles I'm working wood.

As I said to a new "apprentice"
( he cuts up boxes and cleans up etc.)
He was assigned to fix the lock/hasp on the dumpster gate.
He broke a lag bolt off in the wood trying to thread it in.
I said "Hey, woodworking isn't rocket science".
and he started to look pissed and hurt
then I said "It's harder".
and he seemed think that was OK then.

[Winton Applegate]

Ferrari . . . how to take care of them.

Funny thing, they run better with the NGK (Japanese) plugs than the Bosch (Euro) plugs

[Jim Matthews]

God is in the details.

See what I mean?

I remember one of the big dogs, early in the early days of video on the Internets saying,
"Carpenter's don't get paid to sharpen."

[David Weaver]

That one looks pretty good, Winton! Wish mine looked like that.

[George Beck]

One thing you might consider. If I have a stone that is visibly cupped or dished, I use an old worn dia flat or a coarser stone to remove the high spots and get the stone reasonably flat. Then I will go to my "Known to be true" Lapping plate. I use Atoma plates. I also use two plates, one for coarse stones and one for finer stones.

George

[Steve Friedman]

One thing you might consider. If I have a stone that is visibly cupped or dished, I use an old worn dia flat or a coarser stone to remove the high spots and get the stone reasonably flat. Then I will go to my "Known to be true" Lapping plate. I use Atoma plates. I also use two plates, one for coarse stones and one for finer stones.

George

Now that's a great idea. I am always worried about wearing out the Atoma plates and never thought of using older DMTs to do the dirty work.

What grit Atoma do you use for each stone? I use an Atoma #140 for my Cerax 320 and Sigma 400. I use the Atoma #400 for everything else. Do you a higher grit Atoma plate for the super high grit stones?

Steve

[George Beck]

Steve

I use Atoma 140 plate for stones coarser than 800. I use a 400 for about everything else. I do use a 1200 Atoma for really fine stones (15,000 and up) and follow on the fine stones with a very hard, black nagura stone. I also use the 1200 for some backs. I should mention that these days I really don't need to flatten stones very much. I just keep them flat. I use the lapping plates mostly to bring up fresh abrasive. I can't remember that last time I used the 140 but then I don't use my coarse stones very much anymore. I used to use them all the time. I even went all the down to nothing on a 320 stone. But that was back when I didn't really know what I was doing. Nowadays, if I can't raise a burr with a 1000 grit stone, I am heading back to the grinder for put a new hollow ground edge. My current sharpening method is hollow grind and then about 10-12 stokes on a 2000 grit Shapton or 1200 sigma and then 10 stokes on a 5000 and finish on a 15000. My Japanese tools are different and I only use a flat bevel but Japanese tools are easier to sharpen, in my opinion, because most of the material behind the edge is soft.

George

[Tony Shea]

So Robert, did we decide whether this is the dia-flat lapping plate, the new 120micron waterstone shredder? Or is it a dia-sharp diamond stone? I assume it to be the latter given your original coarse description of the stone. I think DMT's 120 micron rating is actually considered to be XX coarse. Which IMO is a bit much for some of the fine 8000grit+ stones. It must leave some serious scratches behind on your expensive finishing stones, which probably doesn't actually effect your final edge but just looks terrible. I used to think that my Xcoarse DMT duo was too coarse but it really has settled down over the years and leaves a very nice finish.

Having said all that, I would almost recommend using a different method to flatten your real coarse (400grit and below) stones as I have experienced some very quick wear on a Xcoarse DMT after using it a few times on my 400 Chosera stone. Before using it on the CHosera my DMT was still very aggressive on 1000+ grit stones. I ended up switching to loose grit for the Cho and the dmt for the others. Supposedly this is the selling point of the Dia-flat lapping plate and will even flatten oil stones without seeing too much wear. I can't comment on how true this really is but I sure could use something to help get some oil stones I've picked up along the way into good working order without tearing apart my DMT duo.

Might be rambling a bit now and may or may not make sense. I have been up for a long time (28hr stretch at work for a big lighting control change over) so I'm a bit dazed.

[Mike Brady]

W. Applegate: dots are dots, not holes. As you can see from my surface gauge, there is a scant .001 difference between the surface if the diamonds and the plastic substrate (dots) to which the diamond plate is attached. You may choose to think that the dots are some ingenious method of removing swarf from the lapping equation (and why would you want to do that?), but they really are there to save that many diamonds to be used on the next product that DMT sells. It is well known before this discussion that DMT plates of this construction are often grossly out of flat. So tell me again what those non existent holes are for?

[george wilson]

The dots may be a method of helping the metal plates bond better to the plastic substrates. I never considered these DMT's to be particularly flat. They had a big one in the millwork shop that wasn't very flat. Construction was too weak.

I have one of the solid steel plate diamond stones. The first one I bought was not very flat. They look hurriedly milled or Blanchard ground. I took it back and brought a steel rule along. It is trouble to check those steel plates for flatness because they are wrapped in plastic,and when you get the plastic OFF,the ruler is held off of the surface by the diamonds. You can see plenty of light under the steel rule. I finally got a reasonably flat one,after spending time carefully examining several.

[Jim Neeley]

W. Applegate: dots are dots, not holes. As you can see from my surface gauge, there is a scant .001 difference between the surface if the diamonds and the plastic substrate (dots) to which the diamond plate is attached. You may choose to think that the dots are some ingenious method of removing swarf from the lapping equation (and why would you want to do that?), but they really are there to save that many diamonds to be used on the next product that DMT sells. It is well known before this discussion that DMT plates of this construction are often grossly out of flat. So tell me again what those non existent holes are for?

Mike,

This is the "Myth Buster" in me speaking; I'm neither here nor there on the flatness of the DMT plate nor the value of the holes / dots. I will share what the "Myth Buster" in me sees.

A .001 hole/dot would equal 25.4 microns. My 1000 grit Shapton's grit size started out with a nominal diameter of 14.7 microns and my 16000 is 0.92 microns.

Thus it would appear that my stone's grit could accumulate in that dot with the grit surface below the surface of the diamond. The holes are much larger in diameter than they are deep so many particles could fit in each dot. Now, that's only one data point (dot) and its unlikely that they're all exactly the same. Whether the one you measured is extra shallow or extra deep we cannot tell from the post. A large sampling of dots and stones would be required to develop a profile.

I'm not saying that those who claim the dots / holes are or are not swarf holders are correct but we must be careful as to the conclusions we reach based upon one data point that actually shows its swarf-holding function as plausible.

Jim