Thanks for joining and welcome! Your question is a good one and the answer is pretty complex. The short answer is that they work in the order they’re offered in the Pro-Pack I, going from 1000# diamond plate to 5/3.5 diamond on leather strops. The long answer is much more involved: Comparing grits of different kinds is complicated because particles of different materials with varying substrates or matrices behave very differently. A good example is a hard particle like a diamond, suspended in paste and applied to leather vs a friable aluminum oxide crystal that’s been fused into a ceramic matrix. Suppose the particles of diamonds on the leather are the same size as the original crystals that went into the ceramic matrix. Although it’s tempting to think that both will produce similar results, the truth is that they are very different. The diamonds are compressed into the leather which is pliable, so only a portion of the diamonds is making contact with the metal during stropping while the ceramic grits have been enlarged through sintering but are also friable, breaking down into smaller particles as they are used to abrade the metal of a knife blade. Because only a small portion of the diamond on the strops is making contact, it acts like a smaller grit that it really is. The leather also has an abrasive quality of its own. When it comes to diamond plates, more of the diamond is exposed so you get closer to a true grit value. Also, because of the hardness of diamonds and the rigidity of the substrate on a diamond plate, the stones dig deeper scratches than their ceramic counterparts of equal grit size. If you look back at the images of the grit chart you can see how comparing grit size alone isn’t sufficient when trying to decide a reasonable progression of abrasive. On paper, the grits size of the 5 micron strop is nearly twice that of the 5000 girt Chosera but the two media behave very differently as you can see by the photos.
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