Any good resources for the nuances of thinning knives of various grinds? My main concerns are practical and aesthetic. Obviously you need to be careful to maintain the blade profile but what about avoiding losing too much height on the knife? And how about surface finishing? I guess these kinds of things just takes years of hands on expertise to figure out. Is there a benefit to thinning on stones vs other methods? What are the nuances of the various methods and how they play with the different grinds? Like say a hollow grind, almost seems like this kind of grind is going to be thinner and also have decent food release, but how do you thin it out without wrecking it? You could carefully do it by hand with sandpaper, making sure not to hit one spot too much so the knife doesn't warp and whatnot? How can I thin out a knife without losing too much height from the blade? So I've already messed up at least one knife. I got a little Denka petty that came with what I think is probably a fatter grind, lower shinogi line. The knife performs really well probably cuz that steel just screams for whatever reason, idk why I guess super hard + fine grain will do that. On a sidenote though, is super blue actually even a decent steel? I mean it's apparently not very tough, obviously not very rust proof and yet it doesn't even have much abrasion resistance which I'm not sure what the right answer is there but I think the common logic is more is better, but is it? Seems like some balance of good enough but also easy to sharpen is what's ideal. I just don't know. Anyhow. I'd like to re-grind it, but I don't want to lose a bunch of height and I don't want to alter it's default aesthetics. Not sure how to do that, I guess I'd have to use something like an 80 grit to put deep scratches then go over the surface at a higher grit to remove all the scratches except the lingering remains of the deepest ones?
Best to separate your questions into related groups, or even single entities for the most important ones, and start more focused posts. You have so much here and they're all crammed into a single paragraph. No one will answer them all because no one will care to sort them all out.
Aogami Super is alright, bordering excellent when from makers like TF. For all intents and purposes it's irrelevant to most of your questions - you said yourself, "as a sidenote". It's nothing so impressive on paper but still has an attractive set of properties for kitchen knives. Tough enough, a tad more corrosion resistance, a bit more wear resistance
as compared with simpler carbons while still on the easier side of the sharpening curve. Makes it an interesting option, and makes for part of its fame, against the very widely used Shirogami and Aogami #2.
Now an interesting question would be: what's the knife you think you messed up and what is messed up exactly?
I like thinning on stones, but it's a personal notion that I cannot compare with all alternatives since I never used them. I did use sandpaper a long time ago, and I consider stones to be more polarized and effective towards my goals. Since I do all stone work on my kitchen countertop, I also like that stones don't get any steel/abrasive dust airborne.
It's not so difficult to get good enough to be serviceable to yourself. From there no big leap to get actually good enough to brag a bit around here with the rest of us. A bit more practice yet and you always know how to get just about exactly where you want. Some people will still be better than you - edit 1: or more aptly put, much more straightfoward and efficient to their goals and that's where experience plays the most - but really at that point you're pretty good yourself and can totally rely solely on yourself. It's a bit scary at first. Like the three first times are I guess the toughest moment where you're afraid of everything and always taken aback by every slight mistake or "surprise" along the way. Still long before the tenth time, if you got there, you know what you're doing quite alright, and you're enjoying yourself and surprising yourself while having seen enough not to be disturbed by anything much anymore.
Tostadas said it, refinishing is a bigger part of the equation, not only being indeed where you'll spend most time, but also HOW to refinish without having a negative impact with food. Like an easy place to get sucked in is refinishing to semi-mirror polishes with sandpaper because it's a straightforward, immediately rewarding process of turning dire scratches into looking nice again. IME it's also pretty much the worse place to get a knife to, with a pretty definite negative impact on both separation and release.
Edit 2: and to some extent you should not confound a refinishing process with a polishing one. Refinishing is mostly caring to the basics: refining a coarse scratch pattern a couple steps up is sufficient where performance matters most, a bit of hiding or blending can do wonders towards proper looks, and THAT doesn't take so much time. Beyond that, concerns shift towards esthetics entirely, and you need to set your expectations right because basically you can spend hours and hours into such projects, and results might not have a great correlation with performance at all anymore.
