Dressing, Flattening Bonded Diamond Stones

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Bolstermanic

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Mar 13, 2007
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You use your bonded diamond sharpening stones for awhile and they begin to very slightly cup. I assume it’s important to flatten them occasionally, but I have questions about how to do that correctly:

1) How often? It seems like flattening too frequently would wear these expensive stones prematurely? Is a little dishing of the stone acceptable, or should the stones always be as flat as my first girlfriend?

2) I use Venev Orion bonded diamond stones in a Hapstone sharpener. Can I flatten those like other (aluminum oxide or silicone carbide) stones? By which I mean: rub them on a piece of glass with a sprinkle of 120-grit Silicon Carbide abrasive?

Do you have any tips or tricks on keeping stones dressed and flat that you’d care to share?
 
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Your diamond stones should not cup. I don't think there's anything that will flatten diamond stones. Diamond stones are usually what you used to address cupped sharpening stones that aren't diamond. It's more like diamond dust, bonded to a piece of flat steel.

I have coarse and fine DMT interrupted diamond surface (polka dot) that are over 20 years old. They are now like fine and extra fine grits after so much use. They are still flat as a board too.
 
Bolstermanic said:
I'm not talking about coated diamond stones, guys. I'm talking bonded diamond stones.
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The bonded diamond stones are just that. They are bonded to a a flat piece of steel. At least in my experience, every bonded diamond stone I own, is made of diamond dust coated steel.
 
Guys, I think he's talking about Venev-type diamond bonded stones, where you have 1mm to 2mm layer of diamond in resin, not 1 layer of diamond coated on a piece on metal.

I think I have seen someone flatten bonded diamond stones before, have you looked at Big Brown Bear or Jef Jewel on youtube, I think I watched that on one of their channel.
 
PMQ said:
Guys, I think he's talking about Venev-type diamond bonded stones, where you have 1mm to 2mm layer of diamond in resin, not 1 layer of diamond coated on a piece on metal.

I think I have seen someone flatten bonded diamond stones before, have you looked at Big Brown Bear or Jef Jewel on youtube, I think I watched that on one of their channel.
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This is new to me. Never seen diamond coated resin as sharpening stones. All my DMT stones are on metal. My Smith’s, EZE Lap, and Spyderco stones are also on metal.
 
Not all diamond stones are equal. Polychrystalline vs monochrystalline.
 
91bravo said:
This is new to me. Never seen diamond coated resin as sharpening stones. All my DMT stones are on metal. My Smith’s, EZE Lap, and Spyderco stones are also on metal.
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Diamond bonded stones are relatively new (well, "relatively" is relative)

The Japansese Naniwa Diamond stone was one of the first resin bonded diamond stone. They have 1mm layer of diamond on a metal base.

Then there's the Russian Venev, they also make 1mm and 2mm thick layer of diamond bonded stone.

US made CGSW also have some of those.

www.gritomatic.com

Bench Stones

www.gritomatic.com www.gritomatic.com

Super Vitrified Diamond stones by Shawn Houston (he had them ordered, can't make sharpening stones in a workshop) are the cutting edge technology of diamond stones.
 
91bravo said:
...diamond coated resin as sharpening stones...
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Not diamond coated. By way of analogy, think of carbides in steel--they're all the way through the steel, not on the surface, yes? With the Orion stones, you have diamonds IN the resin matrix, not on top of it.

Sorry, I didn't realize this was such new technology. Here, from the description:
  • Coated diamonds have all the diamond grains on the surface, maximizing performance. Bonded diamonds spread the diamond grains over their whole volume, and work in similar fashion to conventional abrasives. Only bonded diamonds can be flattened, lapped, repaired or refreshed. Bonded diamonds are universal and able to sharpen any steel. Bonded diamonds have much better feedback and a longer lifespan.
 
Polycrystalline diamonds are for polishing, they wouldn't work very well for sharpening knives as the diamond crystals would break down, which you don't want. In fact, I don't think they really work for stropping as there isn't enough pressure to break the crystals down when used with a soft substrate like leather, wood, paper, etc. You want monocrystalline diamonds for heavy work like grinding steel, quartz, ceramic, sintered carbide, etc.

While bonded diamond stones for knife sharpening are relatively new they have been available for 60-70? years in circular wheels using phenolic resin, which has been around for 90-100? years.

Shawn's vitrified stones are totally different, using a "glass" bond vs resin. This bond has its own set of advantages and disadvantages. Like anything, it just depends on what compromises you want to work with.

To the op, it is more than keeping your stone flat, dressing them also exposes the diamonds to better grind the steel. Proper dressing only wears the resin away, since the diamonds are harder than anything you can use to dress them with. If you wear enough resin away then you will start removing diamonds too, which is needed to flatten the stones. If you are only keeping your stones flat then you are not shortening their useful lifespan, but any extra dressing will shorten it.

I really think there is only one way to dress bonded stones and that is with loose abrasive on a flat surface. I have tried many different methods of dressing but none compare. Sure it's a little messy, or a lot if you use real coarse abrasive, but you shouldn't need to do it very often. The goal is to get the stone flat and then just remove some resin from around the diamond crystals to expose them without removing so much that they fall out, a set of calipers to measure your stone's thickness is handy to know that your not overdressing. I know how to dress the CGSW or EP Matrix stones since I make them but have only dressed one Venev stone and didn't see any difference either in thickness or how it cut. Still, I think Venev stones are dressed the same, read that think as I am not sure.

Here is a video I did showing how I dress my stones that may be of some help. I am pretty sure the technique is the same for any bond stones, whether resin or vitreous, diamond, aluminum oxide, or silicon carbide.


Keep in mind that the swarf that builds up while sharpening your knife will work like loose abrasive and wear the stones prematurely, the same goes for soft vitreous stones that you work a mud up for. For your diamond stones keep the swarf cleaned up while in use.
 
The only thing I have ever done to my venev stones is refresh them with a sic stone. I haven't used them extensively however.
 
Bolstermanic said:
You use your bonded diamond sharpening stones for awhile and they begin to very slightly cup. I assume it’s important to flatten them occasionally, but I have questions about how to do that correctly:

1) How often? It seems like flattening too frequently would wear these expensive stones prematurely? Is a little dishing of the stone acceptable, or should the stones always be as flat as my first girlfriend?

2) I use Venev Orion bonded diamond stones in a Hapstone sharpener. Can I flatten those like other (aluminum oxide or silicone carbide) stones? By which I mean: rub them on a piece of glass with a sprinkle of 120-grit Silicon Carbide abrasive?

Do you have any tips or tricks on keeping stones dressed and flat that you’d care to share?
Click to expand...

Your Venev stones will wear very slowly, so you won't need to flatten them very often at all.

When you eventually need to, then yes, silicon carbide powder with a little water on a flat surface will flatten them perfectly well. Gritomatic sells a set of silicon carbide powder, and they also have some good guidance on which stones to use which grit on.

You will however need to regularly condition & clean your Venev stones. The best way to do this, is with a small nagura conditioning stone. You can use something like the "King Nagura" that is sold on Amazon, or the "Bodrid" stone that Gritomatic sells. Simply rub this small conditioning stone against the Venev, under running water until the surface is clean an nicely refreshed. You'll see that the Nagura releases a lot of grit due to it's relative softness, and this grit will nicely clean and condition your Venevs. Rinse and clean them after with some clean water.

Don't bother flattening your Venev stones unless you can really see them starting to dish quite a lot (this will take years of non-professional sharpening though). Many guys tend to flatten their stones waaaayyy too often, and just end up wasting good stone surface away unnecessarily.

A very slight bit of dishing in your stones won't make much difference at all to your sharpening end result. If you do the math on sharpening angle on different areas of a 6 inch stone (for example), it needs to be dished quite severely before it makes a significant difference.
 
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777 Edge said:
You will however need to regularly condition & clean your Venev stones. The best way to do this, is with a small nagura conditioning stone.
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This works a treat, you can even nearly feel how refreshed the Venev stone is.
777 Edge said:
Don't bother flattening your Venev stones unless you can really see them starting to dish quite a lot (this will take years of non-professional sharpening though).
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These take ages to even start to dish out with normal use. For most people they will never dish out if you use the whole surface of the stone.
 
777 Edge said:
Your Venev stones will wear very slowly, so you won't need to flatten them very often at all.

When you eventually need to, then yes, silicon carbide powder with a little water on a flat surface will flatten them perfectly well. Gritomatic sells a set of silicon carbide powder, and they also have some good guidance on which stones to use which grit on.

You will however need to regularly condition & clean your Venev stones. The best way to do this, is with a small nagura conditioning stone. You can use something like the "King Nagura" that is sold on Amazon, or the "Bodrid" stone that Gritomatic sells. Simply rub this small conditioning stone against the Venev, under running water until the surface is clean an nicely refreshed. You'll see that the Nagura releases a lot of grit due to it's relative softness, and this grit will nicely clean and condition your Venevs. Rinse and clean them after with some clean water.

Don't bother flattening your Venev stones unless you can really see them starting to dish quite a lot (this will take years of non-professional sharpening though). Many guys tend to flatten their stones waaaayyy too often, and just end up wasting good stone surface away unnecessarily.

A very slight bit of dishing in your stones won't make much difference at all to your sharpening end result. If you do the math on sharpening angle on different areas of a 6 inch stone (for example), it needs to be dished quite severely before it makes a significant difference.
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Outstanding! This is exactly what I needed to know. Thanks much bro. You saved me from "too much maintenance," and I will get the Nagura on next order. Thanks again.
 
I received this helpful email from Konstantin so I'm passing it along:
------------------------------

Hello,
First of all, never use other diamonds to lap or dress Venev diamonds (ANY diamonds).
Venev diamonds can be lapped with loose silicon carbide powder on glass. You can watch how to do that here: Lapping / flattening sharpening stones with silicon carbide and electro-corundum grains

The first step is coarse grit (#120 powder)The second step is fine grit (#220 for F400, #400 for F800 and above).
Instead of lapping, you can dress Venev diamonds with soft dressing stone: Lapping / flattening sharpening stones with silicon carbide and electro-corundum grains.

Dressing is simpler than lapping but also improves the factory surface on the first use.
 
777 Edge said:
Your Venev stones will wear very slowly, so you won't need to flatten them very often at all.

When you eventually need to, then yes, silicon carbide powder with a little water on a flat surface will flatten them perfectly well. Gritomatic sells a set of silicon carbide powder, and they also have some good guidance on which stones to use which grit on.

You will however need to regularly condition & clean your Venev stones. The best way to do this, is with a small nagura conditioning stone. You can use something like the "King Nagura" that is sold on Amazon, or the "Bodrid" stone that Gritomatic sells. Simply rub this small conditioning stone against the Venev, under running water until the surface is clean an nicely refreshed. You'll see that the Nagura releases a lot of grit due to it's relative softness, and this grit will nicely clean and condition your Venevs. Rinse and clean them after with some clean water.

Don't bother flattening your Venev stones unless you can really see them starting to dish quite a lot (this will take years of non-professional sharpening though). Many guys tend to flatten their stones waaaayyy too often, and just end up wasting good stone surface away unnecessarily.

A very slight bit of dishing in your stones won't make much difference at all to your sharpening end result. If you do the math on sharpening angle on different areas of a 6 inch stone (for example), it needs to be dished quite severely before it makes a significant difference.
Click to expand...
I just got a couple of venev stones and was going to grab a nagura stone as suggested. I found a king nagura on Amazon that says it's 8000 grit. Is that the one? Or is that too high of a grit?
 
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