Quote Originally Posted by mparker762 View Post
The other big problem is that at 25x those pictures aren't really even showing the results of the shapton or nakayama no matter what the lighting happens to be. They're showing the results of the hone that the bevel was set with. It takes an awful lot of honing with a nakayama or 30k shapton to hone down past grooves of those sizes.

In the Verhoeven paper he shows 3000x electron microscope photos of edges honed on a variety of stones and pastes, and the grooves from the 0.5 micron chrome oxide are surprisingly small even at that magnification. The Shapton hone that this Japanese site is talking uses abrasive granules about that same size.
per Mr. AG. quote: "What I am photographing is the light reflecting off of the peaks with the contrast of the shadows in the valleys. "

So you can't really make an assessment of the size of the scratches. I am sure that just as he skews the blade when on the Nat stone to reveal a different pattern, there was a similar effort to be sure that only 30k scratches are left behind.