@Nutmeg: thanks again for the very nice offer even thou you did not know me at all
. Also thanks for the nagura and fingerstones, all great quality stuff.
So lets get to the AI Diamond. I own a heavily worn down DMT 125, Atoma 400 and Atoma 1200. So I do have some stuff to compare.
General impression:
- The plate is not pretty and not well finished. I know it barely matters, but it looks like a tool found somewhere in an old basement.
The sides and the top are rough, which makes it harder to clean in this areas. Other diamond plates are "finished" much better.
- Flattening is extra super easy with this. Having a handle is great. You need very little force. Sticking is non-existent. The mud has to be extremely dry to have it start sticking. It beats any other diamond plate at this, which is its main purpose.
- The holes make it very easy to add water in the process or use it under running water. It certainly excels at very long flattening processes.
- The small size (it is smaller than most stones) makes it handy, but it does slow things down just a little bit, since you have to make sure to get every area evenly.
- It is coarse but it does not feel coarse when flattening, it comes closer to my Atoma 400 than to the DMT 125.
Here are some
stone specific impressions.
JNS 6000 (representing a standard finisher): very easy, surface felt good afterwards, no need to use something finer after the AI.
JNS 1000: just as easy to flatten. I realized that the holes make it harder to round of corners, I ended up using the corner area of the AI Diamond for that.
Aizu: this is special, because the stone feels a lot different when flattened with a coarse or fine diamond plate. I usually use the Atoma 1200 on this. And after the AI Diamond it did feel a lot coarser. I think its personal preference, since a coarser surface might give you more bite. I personally prefer the 1200 for the Aizu. Other than that, flattening was just as easy.
Blue coticule: this represents a hard and fine stone. You can see every scratch on this stone, and yes it got a lot of scratches from the AI Diamond.
Finally a quick look at the
diamond surface. Reminds me more of the random pattern of a DMT, not organized in chunks like the Atoma . Looks fairly even thou.
F
inal thoughts: it does what its made for and it does it very well. If I had to pick between AI Diamond and DMT/Atoma of same grit when money was not a factor, i´d take the AI Diamond. But the price is a lot higher which is a game changer, and I would then probably go for Atoma with a handle.
Ill might add some thoughts tomorrow. Then it is going to the trip back to Munich to knife nut gathering. Nutmeg set this up already.
@Matus: I think you can get it right after that.
Cheers,
Thomas