Thread: Flattening the new King Deluxe #300

Yeah, flattening a coarse stone with SiC grit feels like a brutal business but don't worry, they love it! S&M ;-}

Look at horsepowered options: https://www.woodworkforums.com/f127/b...-power-142000/

IME, Titan steel is hard in the range of High Carbon steels. If you don't want mechanised help, ask Stu about coarse Sigma Power Select II. You'll still be stuck with SiC grains to flatten them but they cut quickly in relative terms but not by any means as quick as horsepowered options.

Originally Posted by snafuspyramid

The new #300 King Deluxe stone on Stu's website looks about the ticket, but I haven't been able to get in contact with him about two things that I wonder about the stone:

1) Can it be flattened on WD sandpaper or drywall mesh, or does it need fancy diamond plates or (worse!) SiC grit?

2) How does it compare with the Sigma #120 for speed?

Has anyone used this new stone, or can shed light on the matter for me?

Sorry Eddie,

If you'd been a fly on the wall here, you might understand the extreme delay in getting back on things. I just popped in here for a minute, and I'll answer this here. Broader audience as well.

The #300 ships with loose grit, just like the #120. It can be flattened with a diamond plate, but this gives a smooth, scratch refining finish. For speed, flatten it with loose grit. More open pores help speed it up a little. Since it's a closed pore, no soak stone, it'll start to close up and smooth out during use so starting with it wide open is a good idea.

It might be able to be flattened with sandpaper, and King actually recommend it, but in all honesty, I've never used sandpaper and never will except for demonstration purposes. Besides which, this stone is very tough and it might not work very well. I don't know, never done it of course.

The #300 is actually very good and strongly dish resistant. Until I was given a pair of Sigma Power #400 stones for testing, the King retired my Chosera #400, which is impressive since the Chosera is a very good stone in it's own right.

However, it won't replace the #120 speed wise. It's not made for that, and I also send out some finer loose grit to help speed it up. Not many coarse stones can tolerate being sped up with loose grit, but the King can.

The problem is, I'm pushing VERY hard on Sigma Power to get the #400 stones into production.

One version is fast and smooth, very nice finish for a #400 stone and for knives, it should be a good thing.

The other? Mein Gott! I still don't know how or why it works like it does, but it does and it's very, very, VERY good.

(But it won't be cheap!)

Stu.