I thought I had some poor quality steel, AUS 8, on my SOG Flash II when I sharpened it today but I was wrong. My technique was poor the first time I tried sharpening it. I decided on a 17 degree main bevel and a 19 degree micro bevel. I did a full progression with WE diamonds 50 through 1000, then Choseras 400 through 10,000, then leather strops with diamond sprays 1.0 thru .125 microns, and finally a micro bevel with 5000 Chosera. Here are two photos of the edge:
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Yikes! That looks awful. I suspected those cuts were from the 50/80 coarse diamonds and that I hadn’t stayed with the finer diamonds long enough to remove those. So I re-did the progression starting with the WE 100 diamond and spent more time on each stone. Here’s a few photos after my second try:
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That’s more like it.
Conclusion. It’s not always the quality of the steel but may be a problem with the technique.