Hi guys
I'm new to the site and love it so far. I'm also really excited about learning to sharpen my knives. Guitar making has been a hobby of mine for about a decade -- sharpening edge tools like chisels and plane blades goes along with it. I've always been a bit timid about free-handing the curve of a knife blade though. When I work my edge tools, it's always been in a honing guide of some sort. Getting perfect results on something like that is easy because it's only moving inone plane of motion, and the angle is locked in.
I have a pretty wide range of stones. 220, 600, and 1200 grit diamond stones, 1000 and 6000 grit Shapton Glass Stones, and an 8000 grit Takenoko waterstone. The Takenoko is my second 8000 grit. The first was a Norton. A friend recommended the Takenoko, and it's bomb.
I love the Shaptons because they don't need to be soaked. Do you think using the 1000 and 6000 will produce good results? I wonder if getting a 4000 to follow your 1000 - 4000 - 8000 recommendation would be a better idea?
