Care and feeding of diamond paste and honing plates

[Marko Milisavljevic]

Bought LV honing plate and 1u DMT paste out of curiosity to compare with green compound on MDF. Not seeing a lot of difference in ease of arm shaving, except that this diamond paste leaves a bit of an odd surface that with 10x eyepiece looks either polished or like I'm looking at something that came from DMT 1200 plate, depending on small changes of angle/light.

LV plate is quite nicely manufactured, and while it has obvious pattern from grinding, when touched it feels nice and even with a very vague texture. In use it feels a lot more smooth than any of my DMT plates.

Alas, what do you do between applications of paste, to lubricate and clean it? Just like using a diamond plate, water/window cleaner/light oil or such?

[David Weaver]

You shouldn't have to do anything. If you find that the sides or bottom of the plate rust (and I don't know how LV prepares them) you can apply a thin coat of shellac.

As you use the plate, those light mill marks will eventually disappear. When you look at a diamond sharpened edge, it's always going to have that "bite" look to it, not the burnished polish that some of the other powders (like iron oxide or chromium oxide) will leave until you get down to really tiny diamonds. That's just the nature of the way they cut.

That said, you should get a *really sharp* feeling edge off of one micron diamonds, regardless of the fact that they don't leave the same polish looking edge that you'd get from something slightly less aggressive.

In terms of maintenance, keep dirt and dust off of the plates by covering them with a paper towel or something when not in use, and when the swarf builds up on them extensively, you can wipe them off with a clean rag or paper towel. If you got oil based paste, a drop or two of WD40 works nicely if you think the surface feels too dry and don't want to add more diamond paste (you don't actually need to add the paste real often for the very fine steps).