Flattening/Using Shaptons
Dan Clermont in Burnaby
>Hello Everyone,
Couple of years ago I bought a 5000 and 8000 grit set of SHaptons to go along with my 1000 grit Norton.
Now the Norton has worn allot faster but it does most of the work on lapping backs before I head off to the finer Shapton stones.
In the past I have used plate glass as a flattening medium and use the whole glass surface to try and avoid the center of the glass from wearing faster then the sides.
After awhile I have to replace the glass cause you start with 90 grit particles in the center and as you swirl the stones around you end up wearing down the the center of the glass faster then the sides so it becomes hollow in the center.
I find that when I get to using the Shapton 5000 and 8000 grit stones I cannot get a mirror polish on the back of my blades unless I place the stones in the laundry sink under running tap water and press relatively hard. I think what I am doing is pushing so hard that I deform the edge tool I am lapping as the Shaptons are not flat over the length of the stone. Not so many problems with smaller chisels and such.
I need to come up with a cost effective way of keeping these Shaptons flat and a way of not needing to run them under a tap when i need a mirror polish.
I am thinking about pulling myself out of the Shapton crowd and heading for the Norton camp or traditional Japanese stone camp if I can't find a solution.
For plane blades I use the David Charlesworth Ruler trick which is an ingenious method of creating a nicely polished edge which will take fine whispy shavings.
Dan Clermont
