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Tristan

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Ok, so I presently go through the following:

Chosera 400
Chosera 1K
Chosera 5k
Loaded leather strop (Veridian honing green thing)

It finishes off with a mirror like polish - and not too bad a result.

Just wondering if there is a stone you feel might fit in between the 1k and 5k, or after the 5k as a finisher?

For anything sharp I usually touch up on the 1K then 5K, lately started to strop as a finisher after the 5k
 
Hmm all choseras huh? got them from razorsharp? Kinda expensive getting stones in Singapore. The Naniwa SS 10K looks pretty good for a finisher. Pretty ex from razorsharp tho. I think it was about $250. But if it was up to me, I'd save for a new knife hahaha
 
i think you have a fine setup. dont confuse yourself with the lack of stones between 1k and 5k or after 5k. iirc, this is your first set of stones. for kitchen work you dont need to go past 5k and i find that when i do, i lose performance in professional work after 10 minutes. ya that first tomato of the day is great but you will be able to feel your knife loosing its edge.

i cannot stress enough that you have a great setup and you dont need anything else. i would be willing to bet those stones will last as long as your knife.

i personally do not strop on leather/balsa/felt anymore because its kinda the same thing as i love the edge that it will provide but it doesn't hold up like a microbevel in a professional kitchen.
 
+1 to Snips' comment. If you don't want to be sharpening or "touching up" all the time, a 5k edge is great, esp if you don't completely kill the 1k scratches. Choseras are fast cutters. I don't have a problem going from 1k to 5k on those at all. I'd say you're set. If you NEEDED to try something out, I'd suggest a NaniwaSS 8k (it was my first >3k stone and I keep on coming back to this one for some reason) or possibly a natural finisher like the Takashima I got recently from Jon. Belgian coticule (cream color) also gives a really nice working edge supposedly at ~8k but the finish isn't mirror-like.
 
90% of the time I'm just using my 1K and 5K stones (I have all double beveled knives)...then again, the 5K SS leaves a great finish that I don't see the need to go any farther usually.

The 600 only comes out cutting new bevel/repairs, and my 10K SS only gets used when I feel like messing around with a higher polish.
 
I am happy to +2, and know I am not the only one who doesn't feel it necessary to break out ten stones. In fact, I touch up on an Arashiyama extra wide 6000 grit regularly and almost exclusively, as my bevels have already been set, and only need occasional work. I use the stone as a strop as well. It works well in a busy, high energy pro environment.
 
I use almost the same set up. My most used sharpening set up is a DMT xxc, a 1k stone and a chosera 5k. I find that this minimal set up is all that I need. Sometimes I polish my yanagi up to a SS 10k but its mostly unnecessary.
 
Ah good. Thanks guys. I was concerned that moving as I do from 1K to 5K might be a bit of a large gap to cross. Although that's what I keep doing. The chosera 5K already polishes up to a near mirror.

More money for knives then. Guess I'll just work on my skills and stop focusing on tools. I DO have a DMT XXC too, but i scared myself silly sharpening a cleaver with it... so coarse. I hardly ever use it for sharpening now - it does flattening work. Break out the 400 if I need to.

I do want to try a nice strop setup though. Dave ran out of his complete package... which gives me some time to see what marko comes up with!

I picked up my stones from Mark more than a year ago 2 days after Dave did his clearance of Choseras (I always miss Dave's clearance warnings due to time differences), not Razorsharp. They only stock Naniwa SS, no choseras if i remember. Prices here are silly expensive.
 
nochop-im glad to see someone else that loves the arashiyama finish for a working environment. for some reason it puts out such a great finish that looks and feels like a 8k stone but still has so much bite and the edge it leaves lasts quite some time.

tristan-i only use the DMT for sharpening when someone gives me their shun to sharpen for them because they are lazy, ignorant, or possibly both. most of the time they have tried to sharpen their garbage knives on some kind of tri-oil stone they had at culinary school and did more harm than good. its great for resetting the bevels on knives as well as some tip work but that 400 should do the trick.

it seems like a lot of people here like to do touch up work. maybe this is for a new thread but i find the edge i can produce lasts me a day or two (or more if i wasn't so anal) and when i take it to the stones, i always go through my full setup of beston 500, blue aoto 2k, and arashiyama 6k. i feel that when i was doing polishing work and just touching up my old takayuki grand cheff on a rika or something, i was just raising angles instead of keeping the bevel and grinding down the plane. maybe its just me but it seems better for performance when i go through my whole setup every time. i felt as though if i needed to touch up my edge, i wasn't sharpening correctly and the microbevel didn't serve one of its major purposes.
 
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