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Whetstone Flattening

What to do when the wet stone gets carved out a bit.

Video notes: Whats the deal with Flattening Stones?

https://www.youtube.com/@SharpKnifeShop

Compares three flattening tools:

  1. NANIWA Truing Stone. Really only for keeping very flat stone flat. Not for repairing warped stones. Also can become dished itself.
  2. Naniwa 220 flattening stone. Way better then smaller Naniwa stone because you can move the entire sharpening stone around on it. Still not perfect because it can become dished itself. Also best used with silicon carbide powder.
  3. Atoma Economy diamond sharpening plate Basically top of the line solution to flattening stones. 400 grit recommended.

flattening stones example
flattening stones example

Pencil Trick

pencil trick
pencil trick

You can draw a grid on the stone with a pencil then flatten it to see where the dished out parts are and if they are fixed.

Sand Paper method

After some time my DDF IohEF Stone was no where near flat. Looking online I thought I needed something like this special flattening stone to fix the problem.

another example
another example

But after reading this article I learned sand paper can also work. So I gave that a try.

They recommended 220-grit sandpaper but since I didn't have any on hand I did 40, 80, 120 grit in sequence.

before sanding
before sanding

sand paper
sand paper

after sanding
after sanding

I took quite some time but in the end it worked.

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