“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” Theodore Roosevelt
The plates will work and so will your sandpaper on a tile. Neither one is ideal but they are probably good enough.
When flattening stones you want to eliminate as many variables as possible. Start with a substrate that is as flat as possible and introduce as few possibilities for error as possible.
The absolute best thing I have found for flattening is a full sheet of wet dry paper on a AAA certified granite surface plate. This allows you to start with a surface of known flatness. The you add a uniform buildup to that surface with as few layers as possible. This gets my stones much flatter than my Atoma diamond plates. The downside is that the setup is somewhat cumbersome. Also great care must be taken not to foul the surface plates surface. If you are really picky you should even control the temperature gradient across the stone.
A straight edge is not a very fine measuring tool. For any sort of accuracy it would need to be used with feeler gauges. Even then it’s a little rough for our purposes. Luckily we’re only interested in if something is flat or not. Not so much in measuring how far out it is. That is easier to check. Get your stones to the point where pencil/sharpie grids are totally erased in a couple of light laps on the plates. Now draw new grid and rub the stones against each other. Are the grids still erased in a couple of laps?
My answer yes with the surface plate and no with the Atomas. The 400 and 1200 Atoma plates did not even agree with each other when used in progression…
When you consider how the Atoma plates are built up this is not really surprising. You start with a machined aluminum plate (uncertified?), then add a layer of adhesive (hopefully there are no air bubbles between the plate and the adhesive?), then another sheet of metal, then a certain thickness of abrasive (this wears down with time. Evenly?). You get the idea. Trying to keep the whole stone on the plate at all times actually makes things worse with the plates. This causes you to dish the middle of the plate.
Nothing is perfectly flat. You plates won’t be flat and neither will your stones. In an imperfect world total flatness does not exist. Luckily for us close enough is good enough. I generally do not use diamond plates for final finishing of finishes. For synthetic progression stones they are extremely handy. I do think that a good quality diamond plate would be preferable to a random flooring tile though.
The plates will work and so will your sandpaper on a tile. Neither one is ideal but they are probably good enough.
When flattening stones you want to eliminate as many variables as possible. Start with a substrate that is as flat as possible and introduce as few possibilities for error as possible.
The absolute best thing I have found for flattening is a full sheet of wet dry paper on a AAA certified granite surface plate. This allows you to start with a surface of known flatness. The you add a uniform buildup to that surface with as few layers as possible. This gets my stones much flatter than my Atoma diamond plates. The downside is that the setup is somewhat cumbersome. Also great care must be taken not to foul the surface plates surface. If you are really picky you should even control the temperature gradient across the stone.
A straight edge is not a very fine measuring tool. For any sort of accuracy it would need to be used with feeler gauges. Even then it’s a little rough for our purposes. Luckily we’re only interested in if something is flat or not. Not so much in measuring how far out it is. That is easier to check. Get your stones to the point where pencil/sharpie grids are totally erased in a couple of light laps on the plates. Now draw new grid and rub the stones against each other. Are the grids still erased in a couple of laps?
My answer yes with the surface plate and no with the Atomas. The 400 and 1200 Atoma plates did not even agree with each other when used in progression…
When you consider how the Atoma plates are built up this is not really surprising. You start with a machined aluminum plate (uncertified?), then add a layer of adhesive (hopefully there are no air bubbles between the plate and the adhesive?), then another sheet of metal, then a certain thickness of abrasive (this wears down with time. Evenly?). You get the idea. Trying to keep the whole stone on the plate at all times actually makes things worse with the plates. This causes you to dish the middle of the plate.
Nothing is perfectly flat. You plates won’t be flat and neither will your stones. In an imperfect world total flatness does not exist. Luckily for us close enough is good enough. I generally do not use diamond plates for final finishing of finishes. For synthetic progression stones they are extremely handy. I do think that a good quality diamond plate would be preferable to a random flooring tile though.
