Hi everyone, I am new to posting in this site but have been reading all of the info contained in the tutorials and threads for a while now; thanks to everyone for all the great info.

My question is this: What exactly is the goal when polishing the edge. After setting the bevel and working with pyramids on the Norton 4/8 my razor shaves pretty good. When polishing with a 12K and inspecting the bevel with my microscope I can clearly see that after only a couple of passes the edge becomes polished i.e. pretty smooth. After a 10-20 passes the entire bevel becomes polished in this way. Is this the goal, or is this going to far? Should I be stopping at a point short of this to retain some of the striations from the lower stone, 8K, in order to maintain some "teeth" to grab the whiskers?

Thanks.