You are oblivious to obvious vocabulary mistakes. lol :tease: As for the Viper reference it still stands. That missing percentage is where the action is. The high performance. It's where you learn to raise and refine a fine even burr until elimination. It's where you learn asymmetrical sharpening it's where you take a knife up to higher grits and it can hold the edge.
What's the point of learning to sharpen a cutco up to 5k when it fails after one cut? What did you learn? What feelings or emotions are you going through? It's like, "****, what am I doing wrong?!" Then you get discouraged, wash rinse repeat. You may learn some muscle memory, but that's about it. How do I know this? BECAUSE I'VE BEEN THERE! Why is my knife dull? Why am I not getting good results? What am I doing wrong? I JUST SHARPENED IT! The minute I dove in on my Tanaka I had instant proper feedback and was able to adjust accordingly to achieve great results. I'm not telling everyone to go out and buy a $600 knife or that that's the only way to learn. But I will say mostly everything I learned about proper sharpening happened on nicer blades.
Who the **** drives a Viper at 35 mph anyway? If you want to learn how to drive a viper, you have to drive a viper. It's a different beast. Just like knives, there's a huge difference. I sharpen cheapos up to 500 and maybe strop on a 1200 then back on the 500. I would never do that on my work knives. Ever.