I have been working with some Norway maple lately, and not liking it at all. It was very stringy, and not what I am used to dealing with, but it was off of my property, so I had to put some effort into it. I will admit to being spoiled with turning mostly madrone and myrtle/California Bay Laurel. Anyway, I was ending up with way more tear out than I consider acceptable, and the set of D Way CBN wheels are years old. No idea actually, but some of the first ones Dave was selling, maybe 8 or so years???? I quit production turning 5 or so years ago, but still, they got a very heavy work out, and in the last year or so, regular applications of Trend lapping fluid. I put on another set of wheels that had been laying around for years, and the tool edges were remarkably better, and the cuts cleaner. I couldn't even get clean cuts with honed and burnished burr shear scrapers, or swept back gouge wing shear scraping.... Maybe they do wear out. The bevels I would get with them were more polished looking than what I got off of my 600 grit wheel. I will keep them around and see if I can clean them up some. I did try 300X pictures of the different wheels, and that was not close enough resolution to see differences in grits or loading of the wheels. The Trend seemed to get most of the wood sludge off of the wheels, but I just was not getting the edges I wanted.

robo hippy