6" diamond discs for WorkSharp 3000

[James Spillman]

I recently bought a used WorkSharp 3000 with two glass wheels. It came with no sandpaper. I plan to use it to hone chisels and plane blades with established bevels. I have read that some people use 6" diamond lapping discs they purchased on eBay or Amazon. I noticed these discs come in a wide variety of grit sizes from 400-2000. If you were planning to use the discs for honing which four grit sizes would you buy? I realize I can always buy additional discs and glass wheels if I'm happy with the way things work. Thank you.

[Paul F Franklin]

First, the diamond disks do not stick to the glass wheels; the diamonds are a coating on a fairly thin but rigid metal disk. You still have to use with the glass disk for support, but you only need one glass disk no matter how many diamond disks you use. I have 120, 220, 500, 800, 1000 and 3000. The lower grits are only used for major work; say grinding out a big nick, or changing a bevel angle. Mostly I use 1000 and 3000. I usually finish honing on an 8000 grit waterstone, since you can't get diamond disks beyond 3000 AFAIK.

I use my disks on top of the glass disk and use a honing guide that sits on a platform level with the top of the disk. I think other folks use them grit down and use the built in guide on the worksharp.

One other small point...the holes in the lap disks are bigger than the shaft of the worksharp, so you have to roughly center the lap disk on the glass disk. Not critical that they line up perfectly.

May want to check out stumpy nubs website; he has a couple of good videos on using the worksharp.

[Curt Putnam]

The diamond disks appear to be a cost effective solution in the grinding grits. If you just want to hone, the leather disk, coated with green crayon (0.5 micron) is pretty darned effective and quick. So quick that I prefer to slow down and do my final honing, for anything I care about, on water stones (Sigma Power II) finishing up at 13K