Something I saw in sonnysouthwest's post above I forgot about til' I saw his. After you have the bevel set and you are ready to start refining it you can use the tests mentioned above to assess if you are truly ready to move to your higher grits, or on your coticule start refining the initial bevel; never ever ever ever touch the edge again. The only other test you should do after that is the shave test. Touching the edge and continually doing those tests (especially the TNT) will dull the edge little by little everytime you do it; so for all you know you had a great edge, then ran it across your thumbnail, and ruined it, then you shaved, and it sucked; because you basically just ran the edge over the consistency of a cow horn (hardened keratin). Just wanted to throw that in incase neither of you were ever told that before.