Frustrated with my EZ Lap diamond plate

[Jeff L Jump]

Hi everyone. I'm Jeff Jump, I call my shop JumpWorks.

I've been doing a lot of hand tool woodworking in the last couple of years as my fancy woodworking machines sit idle now most of the time. In Oct 2014 I bought three EZ Lap diamond plates in coarse, fine, extra fine to sharpen my growing collection of planes and chisels. The fine and extra fine plates have served me well, but the coarse plate has never performed to my expectations. It's never worked well and I'm convinced it's just about useless. It's so bad, I wonder if I was sent a cheap knock off when I originally bought it. I have invested dozens of hours and thousands of strokes on this coarse plate working on flattening the backs of my chisels and plane irons. My fine and extra fine diamond plates do well, I can feel the diamond abrasive cut steel quite nicely and in no time the plate loads up with a satisfying slurry of gray steel particles. The coarse plate never loads up, seldom do I see much of that gray slurry wash off when I rinse it off. At this point my fine plate is removing steel faster than my coarse plate! I give up, I'm buying a DMT Dia-Sharp coarse stone tomorrow to replace the EZ Lap, I'll see what the comparison in performance is. I noticed that the DMT Dia-Sharp is built on twice as thick of steel plate as the EZ Lap for roughly the same price. Hopefully the DMT coarse will work much better and I'll finally get my chisels and plane irons flat. I have a grand daughter that needs the toddler bed I'm making for her and I have a lot of mortises I need to chop. At the rate that I'm going, she'll be half grown up before I get it done. Thanks.

[glenn bradley]

I cannot speak to the EZ Lap stuff although it seems to get good reviews generally. I have several DMT Diasharp 'stones'. One is a 2.5" x 11.5" fine (about 600 grit) that I have been using for a decade. After several years of good performance it jut made sense to get the Diasharp product when I wanted more stones. "stones" seems to be one of those things that some folks get really focused on but, these have always done well for me.


I do rinse the stones after each use and have a small plastic brush that I give them a scrub with every now and again. I did receive one coarse stone that had a few problem areas (large grits that left deep scratches) which was promptly replaced. Their warranty is: " Any product found to be defective, will be replaced free of charge – it’s that simple!" They mention no time limit on this.

[Reinis Kanders]

I have Dmt coarse and I am not that impressed with it either. In the long run you are better off getting a grinder or try loose diamonds or diamond paste for $20 from ebay on your ezlap plate.

[Matthew N. Masail]

My EZlap coarse is similar to the fine, just coarser and faster, it practically shreads steel, so what your discribing sounds odd to me. All diamond stones will get finer and smoother as you use them as I'm sure you have already noticed. This is great for the fine and extra fine, but eventually you might replace whatever stone you use to raise a burr.

[Jim Koepke]

Howdy Jeff and welcome to the cave by the Creek even though you have been here awhile before posting in the Neanderthal Haven.

I see you are in Western Washington. Anywhere near Longview? I am halfway between Longview and Cathlamet.

I am not much of a diamond stone user. Mostly mine are used in the kitchen. Now days most of my coarse work is done with adhesive backed abrasive paper on a large hunk of granite.

Of late my schedule has been pretty full, but if you wanted to get together to see how your diamond plates compare to abrasive paper, oilstones or water stones you would be welcome.

jtk

[Jim Koepke]

In Oct 2014 I bought three EZ Lap diamond plates in coarse, fine, extra fine to sharpen my growing collection of planes and chisels.

Another thought, did you buy these locally or online? Is it possible to contact the seller to see if they might exchange the stone? It may be you got the wrong one or a bad one.

jtk

[Judson Green]

I've been using the same eze lap stones as you, Jeff and don't seem to have the same problems. But I don't use em to do the initial flattening of the backs, for that I use sandpaper.

I did though at one time feel the medium and fine stones cut better. If I get a chance to get down there, I'll fresh my memory and post back.

[Andrae Covington]

...I have invested dozens of hours and thousands of strokes on this coarse plate working on flattening the backs of my chisels and plane irons...

Sounds familiar. I've never used the EZ Lap stones but I have almost the full array of DMT Dia-Sharp, from Extra-Coarse to Extra-Extra-Fine. In my experience, diamond plates are not the best choice for lapping backs. The diamonds leave deep scratches which can be difficult to remove and so require extra time with the finer stones as you work your way up. It's not so bad on a small area like the bevel, but a chisel or plane back is a large surface area to remove scratches, especially if you are overzealous about how much of that back really needs to be flat.

Also, if you apply too much pressure, you can start to strip diamonds out of the matrix... so there aren't as many diamonds as you started with, so it cuts slower, so you press harder, so you lose more diamonds, so it cuts slower... I did this to my Extra-Coarse stone and eventually it seemed like the Coarse stone was working faster, similar to your impressions. So when you get that Dia-Sharp, don't grind your blades like you're scrubbing a dirty floor.

[Jeff L Jump]

Thanks everyone for your time and advice. This is a real reminder to me to know when to pull the plug on something that isn't working. I hate spending good money on something just to give up on it. Shame on me...I should have given up on the coarse plate long before now no matter how much I spent. I originally sharpened my tools using a granite surface plate and sand paper I bought just for this task. This has always worked very well, it's just a bit of a pain in the rear, I thought the diamond plates would be simpler, easier and faster. A couple of you suggest that for coarse work, particularly flattening tools is better accomplished with coarse paper. That registered with me and I knew I had the materials so today I went into the shop and put some 220 grit on my granite plate and started lapping. To my happy surprise, in no time (10 minutes maybe) my plane iron was flattened sufficiently to move on to my fine/xtra fine diamond plates which put a nice hone on the back of the plane iron and then the chisel edge, raising a real nice wire burr. Next was a couple of chisels with equally fast results. Duh. It's not like I'm new at this LOL...I have to laugh at myself for being so bull headed and cheap. Thanks again, this really helped me.

[Allan Speers]

In my "online forum" experience, I've talked to VERY few galoots who use diamond plates to sharpen blades and chisels. They only use them to keep their flattening stones flat. - And for good reason:

Diamond stones lose some of their initial sharpness very quickly. I know there are some types of diamond crystals that are better than others, but on tow major hand-tools forums, literally no one uses them for flattening iron & steel.

Diamond paste, on a strop of hunk of MDF, is another story, but that's because you can easily replenish it.

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For whetstones, I always had good success with Nortons, and lately I've been very happy dry-honing with Spydecos. The only caveat with the latter is that they are fairly small, so you almost HAVE to hone by hand, which isn't for everyone.

For flattening my stones, I like the Atoma 400 diamond plate.