The Sharpmaker gray stones are claimed to be about 600 grit; the standard white stones are supposedly 1200 grit. They offer a super-fine white stone which is the same as the fine side of Wicked Edge’s Micro-fine ceramics.
I have a nephew who wants to get into the Wicked Edge set-up and I recommended to him to buy the base $275 package and the 800/1000 stones. For your purposes, I think this is all you need. The 600’s will give you a good working edge, but where you want a much more refined edge, the 1000’s will give you a huge step up. You only need higher grits (ceramics, etc.) when you want to show off your mirror finish or by push-cutting newsprint.
For what it’s worth, I bought a box of scalpel blades and the edges are probably ground no finer than 800 grit. The sharpness is due to an included angle of 30 degrees with one side polished. You can achieve that level of polish with Wicked Edge’s strops using the 5 micron and 3.5 micron diamond pastes. I never would have guessed it, but scalpels have a “toothy” edge. A mirror finish won’t cut into soft, slippery tissue.
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