Grinding tip

Ideally, you want the bevels on a new razor after honing to be a) very thin and b) even. This is not always easy to achieve at the first try. And sometimes to the eye it looks like you ground a nice razor, but the reality is different. So what I sometimes do is when I am at the point where I think the rough grinding is about right, I take it to the 1K hone, and hone until it passes the thumb nail test.

With my previous razor, this was the result:

Attachment 147894

As you can see, ugly as sin. However, once you have this, it becomes trivial to grind again and work until the big flats and all hone wear are erased. At that point, the overall geometry of the grind will be correct. Now you can continue with higher grits until the razor is ground completely. If you wait until then to see what it looks like after honing, you stand the risk of having to redo a lot of work if you need to correct the geometry using a coarse grit belt.

Sort of what I do but all by hand.
I start off honing until I can see how the edge is in comparison to the back and go from there.