Remembering of
@stringer advice. I really need to try this.
I vouch by the jointing. Which to me amounts to master longitudinal trail/lead single motion. Which highest chance of failure results from too much weight applied at any point, and sure won't support any angle inconstency without showing. And which could mean nothing. Quite a struggle to get there still. Sincerely, I've been avoiding any kind of stropping more and more as I got my hands and MM around this. Might go back to the finish stone a fair few times to get where I want. Will strop some SS. From a no man's land of getting to just a good edge and plateauing for a long while, I've been steadily improving on this.
But for this to work can't say enough praise of first deburring right, and how much edge leading motions ensure this. Another struggle that is - my former plateau had to be entirely breached by correct edge leading to even better edges without jointing. Then I messed up some of the advancement trying to do final jointing. And then muddied some gained refinement by stropping what didn't needed to be. Or I guess that now my stropping would need to be refined, IDK.
Latest struggle was Sukenari HAP-40. Required adjustments with stone progression AND some amount of final stropping. Probably some of it is illusory, but first time with conventional ideas in mind was rather of a failure. VG-10 and SG2 are easier dealt with - they mostly require the utmost attention to deburring and to a progression that ensures as much with as little pain as possible. Phantom burrs are a plague to any SS for that matter, but now imagine it on a steel hard enough and resilient enough to just laugh at most waterstones.
For tests I do cut paper and shave some hair but only thing I now care about is final performance on board over a few preps. There seems to be no test properly amounting to that, only a few guiding lights that it's time to go there and see. No steels are exactly the same even when the same neither. Been paying more and more attention to what kind of edge suits the knife on a long run with a given geometry and steel and within my use. Can't do what I do to a TF Mabs with any other White steel I tried - I'll never get any phrasing of "Mabs" and "chippy" to ever make sense to me.
Saying all this thinking I'm an inferior sharpener to any advice given above. But as advice comes: learn to deburr, pay particular heed to heel and tip, learn to deburr and pay particular heed to heel and tip. Deburring is one thing and then deburring is always another. Most edges about right cut most kind of paper. Good edges can shave. Hair popping is difficult but mostly a matter of deburring. Cut paper towel all you want with a fresh edge. I want an edge to catch regular printer paper and still cut it seamlessly. This is a particular feeling, and particularly winning one. I want the sound to reciprocate the grits perfecly. I want to test the whole of the edge in purely push cutting holding only one point of any paper with one hand. I'll entirely shred one to two full sheets of them testing so. I won't shave anything everytime I sharpen a knife nor waste a fresh paper towel. I do not always get what I want but learned to recognize edges that will endure board time beautifully - far from cutting paper involved into this. Yet printer paper tells a lot, prefer it to newspaper for feedback. Receipt paper for testing a final edge. Also give a lot of feedback. Especially 24 hours after with some steels. Board use - I do not always get what I want.