I just discovered that if you don’t clean diamonds plate sharpening stones, they can become ineffective at sharpening.

I have had a set of DMT diamond plates for about ten years. I was about to replace the course stone which no longer was cutting and I assumed was ‘worn’ smooth.  Someone in the hand tool SIG suggested it needed cleaning.

I used Simple Green and a scotch pad. It took about ten second to remove ten years of sharpening grudge and the plates are performing like new.  Just saying, I will no longer being wiping the plates off using paper towel after use in the future.