Alternative brands.how good?

[rickboone1]

The recent 20k convos as well as another post has me wondering...

How good is the suehiro line of stones?

As good as Naniwa?

The other brand of diamond plates. What are they? Eze lap? I know some mentioned it may not be quite as flat as a DMT. Has anyone tried one? If there is a difference is it enough to notice?

 

[Bayamontate]

Rick, I've personally tried several Suehiros, namely the Debado Ryu 1/2K, 4/6K, the Gokumyo 10, 15, 20K and found them to be excellent. I like that fact that they are not porous and the feedback is very user-friendly, for me anyway. I wouldn't say they are better or not as good as Naniwa, simply different.

As far as DMTs and the like, I'll let someone else get into that area, my experience is very limited. While I do have a 325 & 600 for grunt work, I don't use them for lapping or slurrying.

 

[thepusher]

I have an eze-lap 600/1200 which is a sandwich of two 2 mm thick abrasives on a 3 mm thick plastic substrate, so my guess is that it may not be dead flat like the Atoma, or DMT aluminium or steel substrates. I have bevel set GDs on it with good results.

Another diamond hone that I have is made by Trend (made in the UK), and it is a 2 sided 325/1000 hone, slightly smaller than the 8x3 DMTs. It is similar in performance to the DMTs and works quite well. When lappping the Chinese fine stone, I discovered that the 1000 side has a few proud diamonds that left deep scratches. This may have been an anomaly for this particular one, but can sometimes be fixed by going through the break-in process using a hard chisel, which I have not done on this hone.

I hope this helps.

Best regards,
-thepusher

 

[rickboone1]

Bayamontate...what do you use for lapping?

 

[Bayamontate]

600 w/d followed by BBW.

 

[Gamma]

I used to buy cheap diamond hones to sharpen my skis - they were notoriously not-flat.
That was a long time ago though - still, even DMTs have been reported to be less than acceptably flat.
I think Atomas are way better in all regards, but they pricey.
Whether or not that level of performance actually plays out in edge refinement is debateable but I'll go for the flatter option every time.