Cleaning/leveling Edge Pro Apex Stones

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KC8QVO

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Apr 7, 2011
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How are all of you cleaning your stones for the edge pro apex? I have some plastic that is loaded on the stones from the base. I didn't order the leveling kit and it seems a pit pricy for what it is. Are there any alternative methods for cleaning/leveling the stones you have come up with? I am trying sand paper but maybe wet sand paper would be better...
 
I use the silica carbide from EP on a piece of glass I had laying around the house... You can also do it on cement, but it takes longer than the silica carbide for sure. I don't know about sand paper, but if you try it use a heavy grit (like maybe 60 grit) definitly go with the wet/dry, maybe the automotive grade.....
 
The kit that Edge Pro sells works, and it's proven. I mean, you dropped the cash for the system, get the rest of it. As far as cleaning the stones, use Ajax, water, and a sacotch brite pad. Have you atched the videos?
 
3M wet/dry sandpaper, used wet on a piece of flat glass is a very acceptable short term solution.
 
@Ben Dover
Hi! A couple of questions: What grit do you use to flatten stones? Do you change the grit depending on the grit of the stone you're flattening?
 
My suggestion is a bit more expensive than the others here, but it's dual-purpose.

Get yourself a DMT or Atoma extra-coarse diamond plate, mounted for the EP. It serves both as a FAR better profiling tool than the stock 120-grit stone, and it does a superb job of flattening your other stones. You're looking about $50 for the DMT, but I personally think it's a great investment. I use mine all the time, it makes setting the initial bevel so much faster and less painful!
 
Lagrangian said:
@Ben Dover
Hi! A couple of questions: What grit do you use to flatten stones? Do you change the grit depending on the grit of the stone you're flattening?
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I've used 320 grit sandpaper down to 320 grit stones. Coarser than 320, I presume one could attempt to locate a coarser paper, or perhaps use a dry paper.

Let me reiterate that I do not consider this a long term solution to flattening. It's an acceptable interim solution until one can acquire a better system, such as the Edge-Pro flattening system, a very large diamond plate, or, or course, the very best, IMHO, a Shapton reference plate and a selection of Shapton flattening compounds.
 
just buy the SiC that Ben sells and find yourself a piece of glass 14"X14" and at least 1/4" thick. The baggie of SiC is less than 5 bucks, IIRC.
 
singularity35 said:
just buy the SiC that Ben sells and find yourself a piece of glass 14"X14" and at least 1/4" thick. The baggie of SiC is less than 5 bucks, IIRC.
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what he said.

the EP system may be nice but it's just a piece of glass on wich you put abrasive. buy the abrasive and find a piece of glass ...it will cost you 1/4th of the price and level stones just as well. probably messier without the rubber thing but just as usefull.
 
I'm fairly new to the knife enthusiast thing, so I haven't needed to level my stones yet.

I see that you can level the stones with a flat surface and abrasive (grit and glass plate). But how do you assure that the new flat surfaces is parallel to the back surface? ie: that you are flattening the stone in a way that preserves uniform thickness and alignment with the sharpening guides?

Maybe in practice this is not a concern?

I'm hoping to _someday_ build or buy a sharpening rig with 0.1mm or better accuracy. (This _is_ silly, but if you want to know the silly reason why, I made a most on it here: http://www.knifeforums.com/forums/showpost.php?post/2374818/ )

So I would like the stones to not only be flat, but also more parallel than 0.1mm over its length (probably around 15cm). This corresponds to 0.04 degrees or so (think I did my trigonometry right). The thickness of 24lbs printer paper is around 0.1mm, so maybe reasonable to achieve, just not sure how to do it. Probably I should buy some calipers...
 
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I've had good luck keeping mine parallel to the backing plate by just alternating my flattening a bit. I use a diamond plate to lap them, and I just change hands every couple passes and rotate it front-to-back. Mine are still parallel within a few thousandths, and I can't see any degradation in edge quality at all. Callipers are a good idea, though, they're useful for quite a lot of things.
 
I have had success with using SiC powders, well wetted, on a flat glass plate, using a "figure eight" motion on the stone. I mark the stone along both sides and the middle with a 2H pencil, and flatten until the last mark disappears.

I wish that I could say that I learned this trick from an old mountain man, but in reality, I learned it from a custom knifemaker! :p
 
Thanks for the tips (flipping the stone around/alternating directions and/or sides when flattening, pencil and figure 8 pattern).

I'm going to buy a set of cheap calipers and see how it goes. Hopefully $30 calipers have enough accuracy to test flastness; I don't reallywant to buy the $100-$200 ones.

Another thought occured to me, which is to use a small mirror and a laser-pointer. If the surface is already flattened, then lay a mirror on it and bounce the laser onto a wall. Have the laser clamped, so it does not move at all. If you rotate the stone around (on a flat surfaces), the laser spot on the wall should not move at all. If the spot moves, we should be able to do some basic high-school trigonometry to find the angle of how non-parallel the surfaces are. Maybe :)

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"What grit sharpens the mind?"--Zen Sharpening Koan
 
An optical lever like that would certainly do the job, although I suspect that the callipers will do JUST fine for what you're thinking about. Honestly, I've only ever checked mine a couple times, I know they're flat because the plate that they are lapped against is, so I check the four corners for distance to the backer plate every so often. I haven't had a problem yet, probably won't. As long as you don't lap EXACTLY the same way every time, I would think that developing too much of an offset would be fairly unlikely.
 
Got my Apex a very long time ago, before the leveler came out, so
Concrete sidewalk, sand, water work for me.
 
Im considering getting a DMT continuous XC plate to do my lapping. I figure it can do double duty, quick re-profiling and leveling. The higher grit stones dish much slower, and wet dry on a flat surface should work fine. I have only leveled my 120 - 600 grit stones since purchasing the EP A4, and I used the above sidewalk, sand method. Seemed to work great on the 120 grit especially.
 
The directions that come with the EdgePro suggest the SiC with water on glass, or alternately any type of sand on flat concrete, used dry. I have the plate and the SiC and have flattened my stones a couple of times. I've always wondered how much water to use. I seem to get this nasty thick paste. Not sure if I'm using too much water or not enough.

Last trip to the beach I filled up a baggie with beach sand to try on a concrete cinder block, I'll report back after I try it.
 
gull wing said:
Got my Apex a very long time ago, before the leveler came out, so
Concrete sidewalk, sand, water work for me.
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This.

I talked to Ben Dale awhile back about the leveling kit. He said another alternative was to use beach sand on a cinder block. I did end up buying the levelling kit though. I bought the Pro model which was close to $500 so I figured why not. The way I check if the stones are level is to look at the pattern on the stone and also laying it flat on an aluminum blank to see if there is any light coming through. It's good enough for me.
 
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