Official Luthiers Forum!

I found a nice old water stone in the basement of the house I live in but it needs to be flattened. How do you all go about doing this?

Do you have any large pieces of plate glass? Granite?
Anyway, either way, if you put some wet and dry sandpaper (maybe 220?) on the flat surface, get it wet, and just sand it back and forth, should work.... that's how I flatten mine.

How cupped is it? I've seen some big old ones that look like a roller coaster.

I start one of those with a concrete sidewalk and a water hose. Then you can move up to Corky's method.

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I use a granite block with wet/dry sandpaper.

Ok cool I was wondering if sand paper would work. I've got some glass I used to tune my block plane with. It's cupped pretty good, I'd say at least 1mm in the middle.

or get the stone flattening stone form Lee Valley ... I bought one and its awesome.

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Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

Hi! if you have some silicon carbide powder available you can use it with the lapping plate / granite and the sandpaper method to speed up the process if the stones are too hollow.

some folks also use the coarser stones (say, up to 300-400) to flatten the finer ones (of course you´ll steel have to have the coarser stones flattened by some other method).

i´ve never used it myself (too much $$$ to get one of them in europe), but the big DMT duosharp coarse diamond plates have an enviable reputation off quick and effective stone flattening. (the todd stock youtube vids on sharpening show him flattening his stones real quick)

the japanese way, right?


cheers,
Miguel.

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member of the guild of professional dilettantes

that's what i use. works quickly. i draw light pencil lines on my waterstone and rub it on the flattening stone until the marks are gone. occasionally i have to clean up the flattening stone.

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brendan 3.0 new and improved, with better interpersonal subroutines

Slab of granite and 220 or 400 wet/dry paper for me too. Though I think I see a diamond stone in my near future.

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Aaron Craig

Home Depot sells 12" granite tiles for a couple bucks each. That and a sheet of sandpaper is all I need

I use a large diamond stone under tap water. Nothing better IMHO.

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

I use a 3/8in plate glass, and go up through the grits depending on how cupped the stone is from 80 to 320-400. I also have a coarse Norton flattening stone, I typically make crosshatch marks with a black felt marker across the stone, and abrade till the lines are gone. I also have diamond stones, jap flattening plate and recycled granite plate. I most prefer the cutting consisitency of my jap 8000 grit stone after it has been flattened on 400 grit wet and dry sandpaper. Leaves a very polished surface or 10000 grit chinese waterstone with nagura (woodcraft) There are many ways to do it . Find the one that is most expedient for you and your pocketbook

I've been planning my foray into proper sharpening and would like to know what combination of diamond/water stones would be the most versatile if I wanted to use the diamond stone to flatten the water stone. I'd like to go up to maybe 4000 grit or whatever you guys think is sufficient for a beginner.

I use a 320 diamond stone, then 1000, 4000 and 8000 Japanese stones and leather strop with polishing compound. You don't want to go under 6000. Most often I freshen the edge with the strop. I go to 4000 then 8000 when the strop doesn't work anymore. I rarely have to go under, unless the edge is damaged.

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

I use a large C/F, but the concept is the same. I go right from C or F on the DMT to a Norton 8000, and then to a Shapton 16,000 or straight to a strop depending on the steel (I find Japanese blades benefit from the 16,000 because they're so darn hard...it makes stropping much faster IMHO).

re: the Lee Valley flattening stone
As far as I know, it's just a Norton flattening stone. The only issue I have with it is that it introduces the new issue of how to flatten the flattening stone. I think it's just their normal 220 stone with deep groves to prevent the stones from sticking to each other. I have a Norton and use it to hog material off quickly, but I find when I'm doing that the flattening stone wears too. When I use it to do fine flattening, I find the DMT works just as well. I think Todd's XC is ideal and wish I had one.