Grinder Gremlin

Roughly normal for a soft 1000, and the firm pressure is why it is at the fast end of normal. Two habits fix most of it.

Use the whole stone. Most people work a 4cm strip in the middle and that is exactly where the dish appears. Move up and down the length deliberately, including the ends.

And drop the pressure. Heavy pressure on a 1000 mostly generates a bigger burr, not a faster edge — the abrasive does the work, you just hold the angle. Medium pressure, more strokes.

Mostly though, flattening should become a 30-second thing you do before every session rather than an event. Then it never has time to get bad.

Small thing nobody mentions: get the pan off the burner entirely rather than leaving it on a switched-off gas ring. Cast grates hold heat for a couple of minutes and that has broken more of my sauces than technique ever did.

Same story with hinge mortises in hardwood doors. 35 for anything I hit with a mallet, no exceptions.

Drag the edge very lightly across your thumbnail at about 45 degrees. A clean edge bites and stops. A wire edge skitters one way and catches the other, because there is a flag of steel hanging off one side.

Second possibility worth ruling out: you may be leaving a wire edge rather than removing it. A wire edge feels shaving sharp for the first ten seconds and then falls off, and what is left behind looks exactly like a rolled edge under a light.

After the 6000, strop on plain leather with a little compound, alternating sides, about ten passes each getting lighter. Then slice through some scrap end grain before you start real work — if it was a wire edge, that first cut takes it off and the edge you feel afterwards is the honest one.

This plus the deburring together got me somewhere I am actually happy with. Thank you both.

Confirmed — clear drag on the right side. Stropped it out and got through a week of normal cooking before it needed a touch up. I had been treating arm hair as the finish line.

Small correction to the usual advice: a pinch of baking soda does speed browning dramatically, but it also turns them mushy and faintly soapy if you use more than a genuine pinch. I ran with it for a while and went back to time.

One check worth doing anyway: after the 1000, are you fully removing the burr before you move up? If you carry a burr onto the 6000 it gets thinner and floppier rather than disappearing, and then you cannot feel it because it has folded flat rather than because it is gone. Light alternating strokes on the 1000 first, until it stops flipping side to side.

Halfway up the ribs is fine, for what it is worth. I go lower than that deliberately so the exposed tops brown while the bottoms braise.

One caution: new plates cut aggressively for the first few uses and then settle down. Do your worst knife first, not your favourite.

Plan around the weak burner explicitly. Put the small pan on it permanently and stop expecting it to sear anything. Trying to make a weak burner do a big pan's job is how people end up believing they cannot cook.