Thread: Hones, stones and paste, Oh My

I just finished making to new hanging strops and two, two sided paddle strops to try out pastes for a finished edge. However, I am adrift in the sea of options. I have searched the forums and read most everything in an attempt to educate myself, but still have a couple of questions.

I am currently finishing my honing on a 8K Norton followed by 50 passes on the back side (slightly tackier but no past) of my shell horse hide strop followed by 50 passes on the front slick side. That makes a visual difference in the edge. I can see the light striations left from the 8K were all but polished away and my razors do pass the HHT. They shave good but I think I can do better.

I was going to try to avoid purchasing another stone for now and go the paste on stop route. I see the chromium oxide used quite often (I believe that is a 0.5 micron?) along with the 1.0, 0.5 and 0.25 diamond paste. The 0.25 paste appears to be somewhat controversial so for now I plan on avoiding it. Given that my stone ends at 8K, should I jump directly to a 1.0 micron paste, which appears to be a big jump to me, or go with something larger like a 3 micron, then 1 and finish with the 0.5 or start even higher on the micron scale?

My next question, is there any difference between the 0.5 chromium oxide and 0.5 diamond pastes other than the grit medium? So I could use either interchangeably (assuming the diamond paste would cut faster than the CO) or should I use both and in what order?

Eventually, I will probably end up with a 10 or 12 K finishing stone unless I can achieve the same result using paste and strop.

Any words of wisdom and guidance?