@Del1r1um:
You're right! I expected someone to make this remark.
I'm in this hobby for two years now and have aquired a nice collection of str8shavers, new and vintage.
I'm quite succesful in honing, but lacked until now the very fine hones used for finishing/polishing. I live in Belgium, and there's here absolutely no tradition in fine woodworking, knifemaking etc. Except some very cheap hones (300 and 1000 grit made somewhere in the East) in the DIY shops and of course Coticules in the few shops specializing selling razors, you cannot get a decent hone. You have to know that we, in Europe, are not used to buy via Internet and the items delivered by FEDEX. I'm not talking about Ebay. We do like to go to a real shop, seeing and touching the products and have advise from the seller.In my case there were no specialized shops, except for the above mentioned Coticules.
So I honed with my coticules (yellow and blue), used the Thiers Issard paste and went to the chromoxide. Thus going from 8000 -10000 grit to 50000 grit!
In my opinion I lacked the 'steps' in between and I wasn't quite fond of the result of the chromoxide. I thought that it dulled somewhat the bevel...Using diamond paste .5 and .25 and newspaper gave a better result, but not excellent.
Then, suddenly, everybody promoted the chinese 12K, the Naniwa 12k and the Spyderco UF on the Forum. Those were the steps 'in between' I was looking for.
The chinese 12K is excellent but I don't think it's a real 12000 grit...Maybe a 10.000 grit
My question was if You all, following my honing preferences using small increments during the honing process, thought that the logical honing progression would be, using,first the chinese 12K (because less than 12000), then the Naniwa 12K and from there to the Spyderco UF (14000 grit).
When you read the post written by Leighton above, he uses first the Spyderco UF and then the Naniwa...