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Does the blade position have to be the same when you go from stone to stone (1200, 4k, 8k, finishing stone)? For instance, if you start with a 45 deg angle on the 1200, can you change to going flat or perpendicular to the long side for the next finer grits?
I am curiuos too.
I assume the answer would be no, you can use a different angle, but I am not sure. On a larger scale, with wood, the reason you sand in one direction (with the grain) with successively finer grits is to eliminate excessive visible scratching but does not actually affect the resulting smoothness.
Let's see what an expert says :)
The answer is...... it depends! :p
If you have a pefectly straight blade/edge that lays flat on both sides then no, I don't think it will make any difference but there will be those who feel that the scratch pattern is part of the shaving edge of a straight and needs to be at a certain angle to be effective.
If you have a smiling or downwards curved edge, sometimes accompanied by a spine in the same curved shape, it will change the honing angle if you change the way the blade is moved over the stone and can cause some difficulties with the final polishing stages not reaching the edge itself depending on what exactly you change in the honing stroke.
I would say, keep the movement the same across your hones, it's not worth the hassle to change from hone to hone.
In woodworking you are actually trying to remove the scratches from the previous grade paper and are not concerned with keeping 2 separate surfaces in perfect alignment as you do on a straight razor with the spine and the bevel.
Regards
Kaptain "Different strokes for different folks" Zero