Keep those worn out plates though because they can still be very useful, especially a 1k that's eaten half a dozen hard arks. It buffs soft stone wonderfully.I want to give an update to my above post above. I had failed to mark my stones initially before flattening and the excessive scratching was because they were convex and the diamond was just trying to do it's job. I stopped early do to the amount coming off.
This past weekend I decided it's only money so I marked the stones and commenced to grinding them down the sink. Well, now I know how a properly flattened stone is supposed to feel! I used the 400 side only and don't see any reason to use the 1000 on anything other than my finishing stone. I haven't done it yet, but I did manage to erase the scratches with the slurry stone.
My only question is whether I need anything other than this 400/1000 cheapie, other than for Arks of course?