DMT W250CXNB 10-Inch DuoSharp Bench Stone Coarse / Extra-Coarse No Base
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Tool information: Manufacturer: DMT Model: W250CXNB Product features:
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Price List for DMT W250CXNB 10-Inch DuoSharp Bench Stone Coarse / Extra-Coarse No Base
| New | New Usually ships in 1-2 business days | $103.95 |
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Tools and Hardware Reviews of the DMT W250CXNB 10-Inch DuoSharp Bench Stone Coarse / Extra-Coarse No Base
Tool Review: Best for flattening waterstones
Summary: 5 Stars
This large, coarse/extra-coarse (two sides) DMT Duosharp diamond plate is the best instrument I've found for flattening water stones. Either side is coarse enough to flatten the 1000 and 8000-grit stones I use for honing chisels and plane blades.
They are very easy to prepare with just a few squirts of distilled water. (Buy the black plastic base too, by the way. The little rubbery mat they come with is a poor substitute. The base keeps the plate very stable. It also adds some elevation, which makes a world of difference when you're trying to flatten the back of a plane blade or, especially, a chisel without rounding over the edge. It may seem cheap that they don't include the base but... trust me, just buy it.) These plates are also easy to flush, clean and store. These are MUCH better than the big ceramic flattening bricks whose pores get clogged up with gunk, and they're much faster and less messy than aluminum oxide sandpaper.
Also, buy the big 10-inch Duosharp plates, not the smaller versions. If you feel a need to justify the cost, figure out the cost per square inch of cutting surface; regardless, the larger ones are just much more versatile and easier to use.
A few other things I've learned about these plates over the past 10 years or so that I've used them:
1. You CAN wear the diamond grit off trying to do heavy metal removal, such as flattening the sole of a new plane. As always, let the tool do the work and if it doesn't do the work, you may be using the wrong tool.
2. These plates are NOT the best tools for grinding a new bevel, and certainly not for honing a fine edge on your best handtools. In fact, I quit using them many years ago, after a few notably unsuccessful forays, for direct sharpening and honing of tool steel edges. The little circular recesses, even on the finer Duosharp plates, will leave myriad nicks that must be cleaned up. This may seem contrary to my five-star rating of this tool, but for direct metal removal, you're much better off using a soft white grinding stone, flat waterstones (or oilstones), or wet-dry paper glued to thick glass or a slab of granite. I use all three, depending on the job, but as I said, a couple of good Norton waterstones is what I use for day-to-day edge honing. DMT markets these diamond plates broadly for all-purpose sharpening, but that promises more than can be delivered. If I had to use them as my ONLY sharpening tools, they'd get ONE star and I'd probably quit using hand tools altogether. Again, these plates are NOT FOR HONING your tools; they are useful primarily for FLATTENING the STONES that hone the tools!
3. You must dry them off thoroughly before you put them away or they will rust. If you wrap one of these in a few semi-moist paper towels, put it in your toolbox and come back for it a month later, you may find you're the owner of something that looks like Chia Pet roadkill.
I don't need to tell you how I learned these things. It wasn't from reading the Company literature.
I've discovered one of the keys to honing an excellent working edge on hand tools is keeping your stones flat, and you're more likely to do that regularly if you have a fast, easy, convenient way to do it. This is the best tool available, to my knowledge, for that particular job, and that's the basis for the five stars.
Now here's a question I asked myself when I first encountered these plates and I've never figured out: How do they press a couple of thin sheets of metal into a piece of yellow plastic and know that it will be perfectly flat and stay perfectly flat?? They ARE, and they DO, but I'm curious how they do it.