Do diamond stones wear out?

dipbait

dipbait

Joined
Feb 9, 2008
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Recently Ive had a devil of a time sharpening a certain knife. Kept thinking it must be the steel, but it is schrade+ . My diamond stone is 25 years old. Do they wear out?

The stone in question is an EZE-LAP diamond sharpening stone
 
yes, they do. Diamond hones last longest sharpening harder steels. Softer steels tend to deform and wrap around/pull out the diamonds intead of skating across the surface. After 25 years I'm not too surprised, some folks here manage to wear them out after half a dozen knives, others have been going strong for over a decade.
 
That's my understanding as well. The softer steels do in fact "clog" the stone. Beyond that, it's the adhesive that sesures the diamonds to the stone that fail.
 
My experience with diamond hones wearing out (yes, I have done it) is that the amount of pressure used when sharpening has a larger effect than the steel being sharpened. Trying to hurry the process by bearing down hard will rock the diamonds, causing them to cut their way out of the plating used to secure them to the baseplate. I have a twenty-five year old E-Z Lap hone that still works quite well, and I have ruined several DMT Coarse and Extra-Coarse hones by using too much pressure. The ones I have used only light pressure on are fine after twenty years and more. I have had them clog, but a thorough cleaning with abrasive cleanser and a Scotchbrite pad took care of that.
 
They do wear out, However I am not yet experiencing it. As well as I hear a lot about soft steel wrapping theories, but did not see it in my case. May be because softest steel I had is INFI 58HRC

It is really hard to say "Do dianond sones wear out", different manufacturers have different technology and different quality, some has polycrystallite some monocrystallite ... It is like asking does the knives dulls fast.

I uses DMT, I noticed that at first they are pretty rough but afte one or two knives they became smoother and continue to keep it from that time till now.

Oldest diamond I used - Sharpmaker triangulars, they looks bold especially on the corners, but continue to do the job somehow.

So I think if you use good brand then you should not really worry about it.

Thanks, Vassili.
 
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