Yes, as expected the Kita did refine the edge and left a nice stria pattern. The chip is small enough that it should not present a problem during shaving. But it does illustrate that the steel may have some issues.

It would be interesting to strop this edge on linen or cloth for 100 or so laps and look at the edge, then do another hundred and see if the pitting and repeated stropping affects the edge.

If you do experiment with stropping a high number of laps, do it in stages of say 25 with a small break in between. I find that doing a high number of laps 50-100, the tendency is to continually add more pressure or strop faster. This would defeat or alter the test results.

The lighting does appear a bit different. One of the things I did was build a jig to hold the razor and the scope in the same orientation for each photo.

All I did was get a sheet of 12X12, 6mm craft foam and cut a strip of 2mm craft foam about 1x6 inches. Line up the razor and the scope where they usually sit and glue the foam strip to the base foam, so the spine butts up to the foam strip. Then mark the location of the base of the scope mound on the foam base with a sharpie. And try not to move the angle of the scope during set up.

I also open the scales, so they are 90 degree to the spine and allow the scale to hang off the foam matt and rest on the table. This drops the scale 6mm and puts the bevel at a more level angle to the scope lens.

I will take a photo of my simple jig latter today, to make it more understandable.

This reference jig will not give you a repeatable mount so that the orientation of the razor and the scope are in relatively the same position each time and make your micrographs more consistent for comparison.

It is a small thing, but lighting can be deceptive and hide or enhance the appearance of a bevel and imperfections of the steel. At the least a jig makes for a more consistent photo. One could do the same with cardboard if foam is not readily available.