I was mainly interested in jumping from 1k to 8k on knives and chisels, but I'm going to try it on my razors too.

I'm hoping that going from 1k to 8k with the sigma will decrease honing time. If it turns out using a 4k intermediate stone is faster, then I'll stick with my current system. Also, there are some stainless knives that my shaptons wont touch. I end up having to switch to dmt's for those. If the sigma 8k works equally well on the types of steel the 120 grit sigma works on, I wont need to switch hones for different types of metal.