Diamond Plate Review:

As many of you know, I purchased an Ultra Sharp II 600 grit diamond plate to flatten my stones with and to create a slurry if I need to (more on that later). Well I can happily say that this was the best choice I ever made. I had my Naniwa Professional 600 grit stone and my Soft Arkansas oil stone flattened in roughly 10 minutes, maybe not even that:

First I drew a grid on the professional stone using any pencil:

And under running water, I created a slurry. In my humble opinion, the 1,200 grit version would be better for creating a slurry because the 600 grit diamond plate wanted to flatten more instead of creating a slurry:

After I rinsed the 600 professional stone and patted it dry, the diamond plate did leave a few scratches, but you really can't see them in this particular photo but other than that it was effortless :

I also wanted to see how this diamond plate performed on natural stones or in this specific case Arkansas oil stones. This is my 8 by 3 inch Soft Arkansas oil stone and the diamond plate did extremely well:

First I drew a grid on it the same way I did with the professional stone earlier:

And under running water I created a slurry which was a little bit easier to do with this oil stone so I'm pretty certain that this will work on ANY natural water stone:

In terms of results, this stone is in excellent shape after flattening which I patted dry using a paper towel. No scratches were present in this stone at all and it was even easier to flatten compared to the Professional 600 stone was which is pretty cool. Remember 1,200 grit for creating a slurry. That seems to be the best route from what I've seen:

Once I rinsed my oil stone out in running water, time to soak it in some oil:

This was an easy way to flatten my stones and unlike the Norton flattening stone, the diamond plate does NOT require flattening. The lapping plates are too expensive and in my opinion, these little diamond plates are a much better route. I got the diamond plate from Best Sharpening Stones for exactly $24.90 shipped. The diamond lapping plates you see costs around $300+ dollars so to me and anyone else, this is a much more economical alternative that are just as effective.