This was a fun study to do – I started with a clean slate, a very highly polished (.25um Diamond on Kangaroo Strops) edge and then created a micro-bevel with the 10k Chosera Stones with 10 edge leading strokes:
In this second image, you can see how smooth the surface is on the main bevel and at the shoulder of the micro-bevel.
The abrasives hit the edge and begin digging a trough, immediately creating micro-serrations and continuing the scratch all the way to the shoulder. Were the strokes done edge trailing, the same effect would occur in reverse, still resulting in micro-serrations. I’ll repeat the study with edge trailing strokes soon.
Next I flattened and re-polished the bevels before repeating the same procedure with the 5k Chosera Stones: