Whetstone Flattening

Atoma 140 Diamond Plate, Pink Brink from Korin

Unless you're pretty good and confident at your sharpening skills, you must get a stone flattener for your stones. It is mandatory. This is the one thing people neglect in their knife kit. Murray Carter is a different beast. He is one of several blade smiths who advocates using whetstones without flattening. He flattens them as he uses them. It takes great amount of patience and skill to do this. Although he has a strong point in using a stone to its full potential, flattening a stone is essential for any beginner and you have to understand why.

A concave stone is a useless one. I have seen a number of stones that have already been abused. It's like the stone transformed itself into a bowl. With continuous use, it's just natural that your whetstone dishes. But once it isn't flat anymore, you wouldn't be able to gauge sharpening any knife with it. Everything becomes experimental. You won't be able to sharpen properly because then your blade won't become consistently intact with the stone. Some parts of your knife might or might not be in contact with the abrasives. It will just generate more problems such as unevenness and inconsistency. Imagine running in the forest as to walking in the park, you just might trip.

There are two things you can do about this. One is to practice flattening the stone as you sharpen. Murray Carter is one of many who advocates this. I have no problems with it. I actually find it amazing. All you have to do is use the high parts of your whetstone first to even out the surface. The only problem I see is that it takes serious skills to have it really flat and it may be a huge problem when sharpening single bevel knives. Single bevel Japanese knives need the flattest stone possible in order to sharpen both the front and back part (hollow grind, urasuki) of the knife.

The second one is all about purchasing a stone flattener. This is the easiest most consistent way of getting your stones flat in a matter of seconds. You just place it on top of your whetstone and gently corrode the top layer to produce a flat surface. You don't have to do it every time you use your stones, just use it when you feel that it's already uneven or starting to dip.

The one I currently have is an Atoma 140 Diamond plate and the synthetic pink brick from Korin.

Korin Pink Stone Fixer

The pink stone fixer costs around $40 when I first got it. It's a fairly medium sized stone that got me through the majority of my kitchen tasks for over a year. My stones came out fairly flat and it didn't stick much to the mud developed of my Japanese whetstones. The only problem is that the more I use it, the more it loses its grit. After a year, it won't work as great as it used to. I don't even know what its made of, I just know that its porous and rough.

Diamonds on the Atoma 140

I bought the Atoma 140 Diamond plate at around $80 as an upgrade to my previous fixer. It is made of synthetic diamonds lapped on a sturdy aluminum plate. The grit is determined at 140 providing the coarsest stone and stone flattener that I have. Yes, you can use it for your knives also as it is mainly a sharpening stone first before a fixer. It just works wonderful as both. It doesn't stick to the mud of your stones and provides a very flat surface almost quickly. The diamonds on this thing will never concave. It just stays coarse and flat forever. It's just amazing. There are other diamond plates out there like DMT and the JKI one but this garnered massive props everywhere I searched. I must say it is worth every penny.

Some people even use sandpaper lapped on a glass plate if you're unable to purchase an actual stone fixer. I haven't tried it before but it might work out just fine. Just remember to use a coarser grit stone or sandpaper to flatten out your stones. Say use a 320 grit sandpaper to flatten out a 1000 grit stone for example.

Never settle on a concave stone. You won't become better at sharpening your knives if you forgo this most important step often neglected.