Totally agree, and what was surprising to me is that, even at a very fine finish, this difference can still be detected.
cbw
I thought this comment from Cliff Stamp might be of interest (posted here with permission..)
“The earliest I can remember this being discussed was on rec.knives in 96/98 as Mike Swaim was regrinding edges to lower angles and leaving them with very low grit finishes both stones and even files. It became obvious then that the knife was acting just like a saw in that you could easily see the influence of the rake of the teeth both in terms of edge aggression and in edge retention. The lower the grit finish the more pronounced this effect can be seen. As the grit raises dramatically this disappears as once you get into the micron level finish there is little slicing aggression anyway it has to be a pure push cut. The simplest way to think on it is to think of it like a saw and just use a 3.5 tpi saw and a 12 tpi saw and now imagine a one million tpi saw (that would be a micron level finish).
The only concern would be machete use because for sweeping cuts you want the rake to be back towards you, but if you take the same same blade and do chopping, which is a push cut, the teeth will get smashed in very quickly compared to teeth with no rake (perpendicular). If you look at japanese knives being sharpening they typically have a very strong rake towards the handle which is suitable for the slicing they do pulling the blade towards themselves.
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