Utopian: I'm confused about your Chinese hone usage, as I haven't seen the sharp/smooth issue between the slurry/water on the Chinese hone in the way you describe. To me, you get sharp and smooth off of the water.

It would probably be more accurate to describe the smoothness the slurry gave as more forgiving, rather than say the water only finish was harsh. I used water only for most of the last 4 months. I did find the c12k slurry gave a different feel. For info's sake - I'd run 20-40 circles on the 12k with slurry, followed by 20 or so x-strokes. Though I've done without any tape/microbevels, I've liked the edges resulting from doing final laps with one layer of tape on a completely dry 12k stone. Between 7-25 strokes, depending on how hard the blades are. There are lots of other ways, but this has been good lately.