OK, here I am with my first impressions as promised.
Atoma 140
The blade I am working on is monosteel 01 at HRC 60-61. It is cca 165 mm long and has a shape of taller petty. I ground the blade way too thick prior heat treat and had to thin it considerably - about
0.5 mm over most surface of the blade. This job took me about
6 hours (in several sessions as one could guess) on Atoma 140. During the thinning I would slowly move (100 sharpening movements at one position) along the blade at constant distance from the edge from the heel to the tip, then repeat the same on the other side of the blade and at different distances from the edge. This would be repeated MANY times until the blade had approximately the thickness I was going for. This would leave the blade showing scratches at around 45deg relative to the edge AND, more importantly - having long 'stripes' that would reflect the way I was moving from the heel to the tip. There would be slight angle differences between these 'stripes', so that one could feel slight 'shoulders' when running your fingers from the spine to the edge.
To remedy that, I would now grind the blade such that the scratch pattern would be perpendicular to the cutting edge (or spine) and as I was moving the blade on the Atoma I would 'rock' it slightly - only as much so that during one sharpening stroke the whole width of the blade would have contact with the Atoma. This way I managed to completely remove the shoulders and got surprisingly homogeneous scratch pattern on the blade. Once that was done I have moved to the Bester 220 (pink brick) which I soaked thoroughly prior to use.
On the Bester I would rock the blade from the beginning (I wanted to keep that nice convex grind I got on the Atoma), but at the same time I would hold the knife such that the scratch pattern would again be about 45 deg. relative to the edge. This would allow me to see, whether I have removed all the scratches. It took me a while to adjust as the axis of the rocking motion (parallel to the spine of the knife, of course) would be under 45 deg. angle with the sharpening strokes, but it can be done. It took me about 1 hour to get the Atoma scratches removed.
BTW - the Atoma still cuts
Bester 220
Yes - it is muddy, but it is not that bad. I actually find it less muddy and less dishing than my Gesshin 400 (I could not make a side-by-side comparison). It is fast and while I did not take out the JNS 300, I would say it is faster - the mud makes a difference with you have large area of the contact surface. If I were sharpening the edge I would surely take the JNS 300 as I would not want to risk to cut the stone, but to remove scratches from the Atoma 140 I would not want to go to finer grit than this Bester.
The dishing - I expected worse. I did try to use the whole surface, but it was not always possible. After 1 hour of work I do not see the need to flatten the stone - that is definitely not bad!
Next steps:
If my Gesshin 400 were around, I would do the next step with it, but I will now turn to wet sanding paper up to grid 400 - 800 (I will decide when to stop as I will go up). Once the blade will be finished I will have to make some sort of WA handle. Then I will proceed to final sharpening which I plan to make with JNS 300, Gesshin 2000, Gesshin Synthetic Natural.
Than my very first kitchen knife will be ready
Hope this helps