I had what seemed to me like a great bevel set on my Dovo "Best Quality" carbon steel razor off of my 1k Naniwa. It shaved arm hairs smoothly, and looked very even and clean under my 15x lighted loupe, so I felt I couldn't set a bevel any better than that. Lapped/rinsed my 4k stone a bit and did 25 x-strokes as light as I could with the stone very wet. After that I tried shaving arm hairs, and it had completely dulled the edge of my razor so that it wouldn't shave any arm hair at all. It just scrapes right over my skin and feels dull as hell.

When honing on the 4k is sounded and felt like 5 times more coarse than it did with the 1k Naniwa; it was like I was honing on a piece of sandpaper, much much louder and much more coarse, even with the stone completely soaked and a big puddle of water sitting on it. Honing with the 1k was more comparable to my Norton 8k. It was a lot smoother and quieter and didn't feel as though I was removing much material.

I've always seemed to have problems using my 4k Norton, and yes, I did lap a lot of it off to get down to the "good part". I'm using the 4k/8k combo, and I don't know how thick each layer starts off as, but I've lapped the 4k side down to around 3/8 thickness. Maybe that's not far enough? But I'm just starting to think there is no "good part" to this 4k.

I'm going to get my bevel back to where it was before, and then try going straight to my 8k to sharpen and polish. I'll post results when I get around to it.