TOPIC:

I visited 5 machine shops in the past couple of days looking for a shop that could deck my block and possibly plateau hone the cylinders. 4 of the shops had antique equipment and were putting out work. 1 shop, had a Sunnen precision hone ( an older elbow stroker hone) and I talked to the owner about honing. He says he does plateau honing on his High Performance Engines he builds for drag racing. I asked him if he started with 120 grit and then followed up with 400 or 500 grit. No he says. I bore to within .005" then hone to within .003" with 230 grit and finish with 500 grit to finished size. Then he shows me a 500 cubic inch engine he just finished and the bores are as smooth as a baby's ass. No RvK grooves to hold oil at all and he thinks he's done a good job. A proper plateau hone job will hone to size with 120 grit and then follw up with 10-20 strokes at 400-500 grit, taking suface measurements to confirm the final finish. RvK of 60-70, RK of 40 and RpK of 30-40 would be a good goal to achieve. Taking out the last .003" with a 500 grit stone and all you've done is removed all of the oil retention valleys. You may as well piss your brand new rings away. No oil retention valleys and you'll overheat the rings. 
He has the equipment to measure surface finish which measures RK- average surface finish, RpK which measures the peaks above average and RvK which measures the valleys below the RK average. He also tells me that he uses Total Seal rings on all of his performance engines and he hones to their spec requirements, but I can't believe what he showed me and I'm to believe that he does good work ???
Hence why I bought a new hone. I wish people that offer services kept up with the technologies. I try to but bear in mind that I spend my time researching what I can on Google and not taking formal training courses, so I know more than most, but I'm far from an expert.

Still working on cleaning up the cylinder block for reinstalling the sleeves. I got about 8 hours into cleaning the block and I still have probably another 8 hours of cleaning left on the block, then on to finishing cleaning the sleeves.
I don't know what Kawasaki used to assemble the cylinder block and sleeves with, but it's baked on and no chemical will touch it. It's delicate scraping and then 400 wet / dry paper to finish cleaning. My fingers are just about wore out and cut from working inside of the 70mm bores of the block.
Bottom side of the block where 2 o rings belong.

 

Top land on the block where the top ring seals. Top o ring sits in a groove on the sleeve.

My arthritic hands wouldn't fit in there and if they did, wouldn't last for long. Take it slow and easy. But you know that.