Found Someting In A Drawer

[David Eisenhauer]

I opened up a bottom drawer in the shop that rarely gets opened and I found an apparently brand new DMT Dia Flat Lapping Plate in an opened package, but obviously never used. It says it is a 120 mesh/120 micron ("Extra Coarse" according to DMT) and has a certificate with it stating that is flat to within .0005". I currently use an Atoma for flattening my Sigma 1,000/6,000/13,000 stones now and previously used the messier King stones with wet/dry paper on a piece of glass for stone flattening. Maybe I got it to use for stone flattening, but I do not remember buying it at all. Question: Can I use the Dia Flat for my "grinding" on chisels/plane irons if I need to do some major overhaul or reshaping of an edge? I don't typically power grind, but can do it if I need to by using some type of white Dresser Industries "cool" stone on my old 6" 3,580 rpm bench grinder. For various reasons, I don't do this very often and wonder if the Dia Flat would take the place of that? Or sell it off? Or keep it to use if/when the Atoma goes South?

[Frederick Skelly]

David, I have that same "stone". Bought it and used it for significant shaping - flattening backs of chisels and plane irons and reprofiling primary bevels. It worked fine - just slow. I've moved on to Worksharp for those tasks now, but I keep it just in case.
Fred

[David Eisenhauer]

Thanks for the feedback. I was wondering if it could be used for re profiling and, also, if it left too deep scratches when flattening backs. I will see tomorrow how it works for flattening backs.