Flattening Veneve Diamond Stones

[rwfishman]

Happy New Year All!

I've been watching some YouTube videos on flattening Venev diamond and other stones and one method includes using a glass plate with water and silicon carbide grits. What type of glass is the best to use, tempered, not tempered, or does it matter, and how thick should it be? I've been able to find almost everything else on the subject except this. One person said "plate glass" but later referred to it as "tempered" but those 2 types of glass are not the same. I'd appreciate any input and suggestions.

Thanks again!
Randy

[Mark Reich]

I hadn't heard of Venev plates, so I searched them and came up with the Gritomatic site selling them. A little more research tells me the Venev diamond stones are vitrified diamond stones from Russia. That means the Venev stones are actually like regular water stones, except Venev uses diamond particles instead of the regular aluminum oxide or whatever. That means that the Venev stones will need to be flattened, and you can't use them for flattening other stones.

Most people use DMT or Atoma diamond plates to lap their water stones, but since the Venev stones use diamond particles you wouldn't want to flatten them on diamond plates.

I started out flattening Edge Pro and other water stones with the type of sand used for sandblasting. I didn't use glass, I used the sand on concrete, which actually worked great. Later I bought some silicon carbide grit from Ben, and used it on glass, which does work better.

A piece of regular glass about 6"x 12" by 1/4" thick works well, but bigger is better. It's kind of hard to keep the grit on the glass.

If you ask a glass shop for a scrap of double thickness or 1/4" glass, you'll probably get it for free.