# About all you need short of a diamond plate



## rad457 (Jun 15, 2013)

What are you using to flatten them? Was at a Lie Nielson show last year and sprung for a set of there stones, no need to soak, spray some water on them and ready to go is what they claim and for the 10000 works pretty good but find on the 1000 needs to soak up some water for a couple of min. Much better than the two sided norton I had been using which is still a very good stone but needs flattening more often.

edit, when you go up to 8000 + no need to strop, mirror polish. the diamond flatten plate from Lee Valley is worth every penny it costs!


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## jonah (May 15, 2009)

I use the Norton flattening thingy. It seems to be about twice now as much as I remember paying for it. I want to say I paid something between $15 and $20, but it's $30 on Amazon at the moment.


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## AttainableApex (Aug 24, 2010)

> - jonah


I used to use that norton flattening stone but found it unusable. how do you keep both stones flat? my flattening stone was horrible and use the method of rubbing two together but it took so much material away even on my 200 grit stone that i said i was done with it. I also tried glass and sandpaper to flatten it but couldn't get close.

I ended up getting a long diamond stone like maybe 11×3 at 120 grit and it is a world of difference to flatten. i got it too rough for fine sharpening and its even a little rough for flattening the 6k and 8k stones but it works well and is really great at creating a bevel or removing material. It was like $90 or something, not cheap.


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## jonah (May 15, 2009)

I've never found my stones to be far enough out of flat that the Norton stone had to remove a whole lot of material. I try to spread my sharpening around the stones as much as I can, and they only ever get very slightly out of flat. I think I've flattened each one once or maybe twice.

If it's really an issue, you could hit up Harbor Freight and see how flat their diamond plates are.


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