Is there a downside to coarse flattening of fine stones?

[Ty Williams]

I'm trying to pinch every penny until it squeals here. I've got the 220, 1500, and 5000 Shapton Pros and I'm tired of the mess and hassle of the way I'm flattening them now. I'd like to buy a Atoma 140 off Amazon and use that. Everyone seems to agree it's fine for the 220 stone but a lot of people talk about switching to the Atoma 400 for stones above 1000. What's the downside to just plowing ahead and flattening my 1500 and 5000 Shaptons with the Atoma 140?

[Vincent Tai]

Go ahead and flatten. It's not something I would really worry about for stones coarser than 2 micron abrasive sizing. It's more an issue (imho) with natural stones. I flattened my 13000 sigma and shapton 30000 with a 120 DMT lapping plate for years. Leave the slurry on and sharpen away. Maybe if you're interested in planing contests, etc you would need to worry more. Personally I would love a few different lapping plates for natural fine stones to low grit stones, to the in between, for diamond stones etc. But 1 lapping plate will let me sharpen fine. Though I do use a second plate; Atoma 1200x for my Jnats.

[Mike Henderson]

I flatten all my Shapton pro water stones with a DMT Coarse diamond plate and never had any problems. The stones get my tools sharp.

Mike

[Richard Jones]

I use my Atoma 140 on everything up to and including a natural Koppa. It'll be fine.

[Andrew Hughes]

I agree use what ever works. I have a round ceramic disk I use to keep my Shaptons cutting well.
Keeping them flat is not that hard if you use the whole stone even.

[William Fretwell]

The biggest downside is watching your money wash away. Those are the most expensive stones. Using the stone evenly and just enough flattening when needed makes economical sense.

[Mike Henderson]

The biggest downside is watching your money wash away. Those are the most expensive stones. Using the stone evenly and just enough flattening when needed makes economical sense.

I've been flattening my Shapton pro water stones on a DMT diamond plate and at the rate they're washing away, they'll outlive me and whoever I leave them to in my will.

A much bigger problem was that I dropped one and it broke in half. I glued it back together with epoxy after I dried it well. Still works fine.

Mike

[For anyone who ever gets a Shapton Pro worn down thin, Derek posted about how he glued one of his stones to a piece of glass. I would think that when a Shapton pro gets thin you risk having it break without some support. Perhaps that's why they came out with the Shapton glass stones, which are thinner Shapton stones glued to glass. They probably realized that a thinner stone would last someone for their lifetime, but without some support, it would break. I prefer the pro stones because you have two sides to work before you have to flaten.]

[Andrew Fleck]

I never noticed a downside back when I used water stones. I flattened everything with a diamond plate to include a Shapton 8000.

[William Fretwell]

I just took delivery of a 10,000 from Japan, foolishly thought it would arrive flat. Not a chance, required much flattening. Hope you are right Mike!

[Andrew Hughes]

I’ve also broken a Shapton in half. I remember something rolled underneath the stone I didn’t notice.
This was on my first set of shaptons. All my shaptons are glued to separate glass plates. I think it does help to keep them flat when they dry they change shape.
I don’t see any would spend for a soft natural stone. But a 10,000 grit sounds epic.:)

[Miles Shea]

I have the Atoma 140 and the 400 and use them to flatten my Shapton pro 1k and King 6k. I'm no expert sharpener, but the only difference I've noticed is in speed, so I don't bother using the 400 to flatten anymore.

[Matthew Springer]

I use my DiaLap on everything and it seems to work fine. Do wipe off your flattening stone between flattening different grits OR don't bother and go from finest to coarsest since you can get 8k grit on a 5k stone but the other way around is bad. Practically I'm pretty sure it doesn't really matter, but it seems to cut down on the "rogue scratch" effect. It's mainly just me being pedantic.