Ali leveling stone fail

[PeterT]

I have a nice leveling stone from Japan for flattening my knife sharpening water stones, but I think it was like $40. I wanted one for dressing shop oil stones & don't fancy the taste of WD-40 so I took a gamble on this 9.99U model from AliExpress. A lot of their other sharpening products looked decent. It arrived in good time, unfortunately contained in this cardboard box with 4mm bubble wrap. Shockingly it was broke.

So while I'm getting refunded I thought nothing to lose, try & put Humpty Dumpty together again. I used JB weld on the crack, taped it square with just a bit of joint tension & set it on a glass plate with a weight. Welllll... it kinda semi worked but not really. Actually along the long axis I cant see any daylight with a steel rule, but turns out it has a bit of crown on both sides looking at it from end. So I dont think it was manufactured too flat to begin with. In hindsight I glued it up the wrong way. I should have laid the rib side down (assuming it would be flat) because the back side is not expected to be accurate. Who knows. It does recondition the oil stones cutting wise, but I don't think I can count on flatness. I went back & compared steel rule daylight on my Japan stone, it is very accurate. This was more of an experiment but I think I'm going to go back to lapping compound. Its messy but it works & the consumables don't cost much.

 

[PeterT]

Next up on the 'don't throw good money after bad... but I just cant resist so help me...' was this diamond flattener with artificial (ie. no diamond) pseudo-fluid grooves. I saw it on a Tom Liptons video & he seemed to be OK with it, at least preliminary testing.
https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B07P7DZV2J/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Well it definitely cuts better & truer. But I'm seeing the same effect as my other Asian diamond plate experiments. The sharpness of the grit is dullened in no time. I'm going to save this one & use it for the kitchen stones which I think are softer & the flattener will last a lot longer. I think maybe my oil stones are just plain harder?

I've found diamond powder grit in some of the lapidary suppliers but even tubes of premix is so cheap. I messed around a little bit just using a steel plate & it seemed to be quite effective on the stone. At least that way it will be fresh abrasive every dressing session.