Thread: A beginners experience with diamond paste

Hi KyleH,
I have been in the trade for 40 years and only ever used oil stones India and Akansas to sharpen so I am watching with great interest, nothing wrong with a bit of trial and error. So what is the best flat plate to use for this approach. Good luck.
Regards Rod.

Well I'm not exactly an old hand at sharpening my self but after using water stones there has to be a cleaner way. I went into diamond paste and diamond plates and not looked back. On a new sharpen I start with the 400 diamond plate and move up to 1000 followed by a 4000 diamond plate. It is now that I start with the diamond paste after the primary bevel has been produce by starting on the micro bevel with 8000 then 14000 diamond paste. I get a mirror finish and very sharp. I have used on hard wood with no problems all day. I also strop the green stuff on leather in between jobs. I do this process with chisels and plane blades and love it. I do what fence furniture does, use MDF as the base for the diamond paste and less paste is better.


SB

yeah I plan to try MDF as I have read it is very for for the causer pastes but not for finer ones. I will also like to try cast iron and plane to get some really cheap hand planes that are broken or just really cheap and use that as my plate. Ill post more of my experiences and see if I can obtain some planes, so if anyone has some planes that want to gt rid of that are broken id love them (waste not, want not)

MDF is a poor substrate for diamond paste. What you want is a medium that will hold the grit in the paste at the surface of the substrate. MDF is too soft. A blade will push the grit below the surface. It will work for a short while, and then you will need to recharge the MDF.

The ideal substrate is cast iron. Some mild steel is also good.

I made cast iron plates from old planes ..

http://www.inthewoodshop.com/Woodwor...mondpaste.html

Regards from Perth

Derek

Originally Posted by derekcohen

MDF is a poor substrate for diamond paste. What you want is a medium that will hold the grit in the paste at the surface of the substrate. MDF is too soft. A blade will push the grit below the surface. It will work for a short while, and then you will need to recharge the MDF.

The ideal substrate is cast iron. Some mild steel is also good.

I made cast iron plates from old planes ..

http://www.inthewoodshop.com/Woodwor...mondpaste.html

Regards from Perth

Derek

I find MDF fine, however, I have respect for Derek as he has much experience. I like the idea of using a plane for the steel plate and when I come across some in my travels I'll give it a try, why not, Derek is often right in this area. I replace my MDF often as it's cheap and I have lots of it laying around the workshop but I can see derek has a long term solution.

SB

Iv'e always been interested in diamond paste and i'd like to give it a go one day.

Andy

I've been using Diamond Paste for about two years after switching from W&D stuck to glass. Bought 10 syringes of 5 differents grits for about $30, half of them remain unused. Baby oil is my lubricant of choice (as recommend by Derek ?), decanted into a syringe from the chemist. A couple of drops per session is usually enough.

Never had much luck with either MDF or hardwood as a substrate - found it too easy to gouge a chunk out. So I bought two Veritas Steel Honing Plates Veritas® Steel Honing Plate - Lee Valley Tools
with the idea to;
a) use both sides of the plate although LV customer service says to only use one side after gluing the other to thick plywood - I havent yet and they still seem flat.
or
b) use one grit per end with the MKII honing guide roller running on something else. As I read somewhere (Derek again ?) one shouldnt run a honing guide roller over diamond paste because it's easy to wear a flat spot into the roller.

Because the stroke of the MKII is so short I found that 1 grit per one end worked fine. I made up a little platform so the honing guide roller was raised up to the same height of the plate and didnt have to adjust any angles. The running area is MDF because I had offcuts that matched the honing plate thickness and the base is two layers of 12mm thick Plywood because I thought it might be more stable than MDF. It's a little rough so I may encase them in timber with a lid ala the traditional oilstone box.

plate1.JPG

Each end has a different grit and so far so good with regards to cross contamination. Using less than half the plate is a little short for freehand sharpening though. I've marked the grit used with texta - 800, 2000, 8000, 15000 (these are the approximate conversions I made via a grit table). These plates provide a much harder surface and speeds up the sharpening no end over MDF.



I've never tried Waterstones but for the cost of the paste I'm very happy with it. A word of warning though, the postage quote I got on the plates alone is about the same as the plates themselves...when I purchased them in conjunction with a few other items it was more reasonable.

Cheers,

Sam

Sam is there enough room to flatten the backs of the plaes and chisels that way?

edit: oh and you can get those honing plates from carbatec for $30 so no need to ship them.

Kyle

Kyle,

The way I'm using them there isnt room to flatten a chisel or such, already done everything I own either on an oilstone or W&D. There is enough room to swipe any burr that occurs off (not that a great burr develops with the paste in my exp).

When I ordered mine Carbatec they werent listed on the website. Do they have them in they in stock ?

Sam

This might be a bit heretical but an aluminium plate of a suitable alloy, that is not too soft would seem to be a good idea for diamond paste. The diamonds should embed themselves in the parent material but whether it would stay flat or not would require some experience. The same could be said for CI as a plate material, will it stay flat over the long term?