Originally Posted by
Euclid440
Interestingly, I was just having this conversation, about what I call a `transition stone. The 1k or whatever grit your bevel setting stone may be, is your grinding/shaping stone. The bevel setter flattens the bevels, sets the bevel angle and gets them to meet in a straight edge. To do so efficiently we use a low grit that quickly accomplishes the tasks, but leaves deep stria and a ragged edge.
The next stone is possibly the most important stone in the progression, especially so for novice honers, it makes the transition from shaping to polishing the bevel and straightening the edge.
Typically we go to a 3-4k-ish stone, but most are either too aggressive or not aggressive enough. The goal here is to remove or flatten the 1k stria and straighten the edge by reducing stria height, while keeping the bevels meeting without breaking off the ragged edge, but reduce it by honing.
This is where many novice honers have difficulty, polishing a bevel that has an edge that is very ragged and the transition stone is not aggressive enough, not flattening the 1k stria and leaving a ragged edge, or too aggressive leaving deep stria and a new ragged edge, and the novice move up in polishing grit and the edge is not completely meeting and has even less a chance of meeting at a higher grit.
The trick is finding the right stone or doing enough laps or fewer laps to straighten the edge. For all but the novice, we can read the edge and know when we have reached that point and/or what is needed to move to the polish stone, the 8k where the edge really become straight.
If the transition stone is not aggressive enough, or too aggressive, more time and effort will be required of the 8k. Usually just removing the 1k stria is enough to move to the 8k polish stone and still have a straight meeting edge.
I can see where a 2k stone can be a very good transition stone, aggressive but not too, and possibly better than the standard 4k, especially for the novice.
I have been testing a Nubatama 4k stone, it is very hard, yet agressive and produces a shallow stria pattern. It easily polishes with an 8K.
Another alternative is to bevel set on a higher grit stone, a 2.3 or 4K stone.