Diamond paste on old DMT diasharp?

[Reinis Kanders]

I ruined by 3 micron diasharp by using it to lap spyderco UF, but I happen to have some 3 micron diamond paste.
Would diasharp nickel coated plate work as a substrate for the paste?
I am asking because I would not want to embed those diamonds in the tool instead of the plate. My initial assumption is that it probably will work.

Any thoughts? Thanks.

[Mike Brady]

The ruined Diasharp plate would probably be an acceptable surface for lapping with diamond paste, but don't count on the diamonds from the paste becoming embedded in the surface of the plate. The plating on that surface is nickel, and the action of lapping a blade on that surface will simply wear away that plating the way it wears away the edge of your blade. This is pure conjecture on my part. I would be concerned about the residual diamond crystals in the plate being perhaps coarser than your paste crystals, so why not just use a plain metal plate as the base for lapping, or maybe MDF?

[Metod Alif]

I would give it a try. A dab of diamond paste is not much money. A good price for what will you have learned. Wood (such as hard maple), cast iron or mild steel might be a better use for diamond paste.
Best wishes,
Metod

[ian maybury]

My sense Reinis is that a lapping plate is probably not going to be all that effective unless the diamond grits embed in it - they otherwise risk skidding about and being wiped off.

It might also pay to be careful what you use the old diamond plate for. I destroyed an old plate trying to refresh a Tormek standard wheel, it tore diamonds out of an area. Which only showed up when I tried to use the same plate to flat waterstones - because it wasn't cutting evenly (and possibly because it was a hair lower in some areas than others) it was no longer doing a good job of keeping the stones flat. Which showed up while trying to hone single bevel sharpened Japanese chisels - i couldn't get the bevel/flat to clean up/polish to a uniform finish all over. It took a while to figure what had happened...

[Benjamin Amadon]

hello,
I was wondering the same in another post and had not noticed yours. I'm interested to know if you finally gave it a try and if it worked.

Benjamin

[Reinis Kanders]

I never gave it a try. Other day I had a thought of using the plate as a substrate for diamond lapping film when my current substrate gets out of flat (plexi on wood).

[Patrick Chase]

My sense Reinis is that a lapping plate is probably not going to be all that effective unless the diamond grits embed in it - they otherwise risk skidding about and being wiped off.

It's actually worse than that. When you rub two materials of differing hardness against each other with loose abrasive in the middle, the softer material will preferentially lap the harder one. In other words, if the substrate for the paste isn't significantly softer than the tool being lapped then you'll end up lapping the plate instead of the tool. You'll be chasing your tail with flatness problems in short order.

I would personally recommend against trying to recycle a DMT plate that way. If you want to go the paste-on-metal route then get a precision-ground cast iron or mild steel (1018 and A36 work fine) plate.

This is also why granite is a poor substrate for loose-grit lapping unless you put a softer laminating sheet on it first.