How often do you lap or flatten your whetstones?

[BanjoDadPDX]

Greetings All

I am getting into honing my kitchen and pocket knives, and I am wondering when I should use a lapping plate or flattening stone. I understand that with cutlery you don’t need to nearly as much as you would with straight razor honing stones. But, I dont want dishing to ruin the straightness of the honing. How often do you all flatten your non-SR hones?

I am using a King 1k/6k dual stone. I have not purchased a flattening stone yet.

Thanks.

 

[Legion]

Greetings All

I am getting into honing my kitchen and pocket knives, and I am wondering when I should use a lapping plate or flattening stone. I understand that with cutlery you don’t need to nearly as much as you would with straight razor honing stones. But, I dont want dishing to ruin the straightness of the honing. How often do you all flatten your non-SR hones?

I am using a King 1k/6k dual stone. I have not purchased a flattening stone yet.

Thanks.

It depends on the stones. I mostly use natural stones, and they tend to be harder and less prone to dishing than synthetic water stones like your King.

With a stone like yours I would probably give it a quick lap after every honing session. "A little bit, often" is a good mantra. Less than a minute on something like an Atoma 400 will keep it flat, but also clean out any swarf so the hone is nice for the next use.

 

[jj_sharp]

Some ideas for you to consider.

For knives, hoes, and other tools, I use hard oilstones and ceramics. They tend to stay flat.

My intuition says a fairly flat stone may give faster results. Wil it make enough of a difference to make a difference? I don't know.

Try using the high spots for sharpening and see if that helps you. Otherwise go out to a piece of concrete and bring down the high spots when they get bad enough to irritate you.

I have a sandy yard, I throw sand and water on concrete stepping stones to resurface sharpening stones sometimes. I have flattened and resurfaced hard stones this way.

Don't suffer dull knives. Fix it so that your wife and/or mom does not have to suffer dull knives either.

 

[McCracken]

It all depends on the stone and the steel as mentioned above more often is better especially with relatively soft stones like the king 1k. I typically use diamond plates up to about 600 grit just to avoid lapping water stones then jump to shapton pro 1.5k (I rarely sharpen knives above 600 grit or so).