Depends heavily on the stone. Splash-and-go stones and harder synthetics hold flat far longer than a soft soaker. If you find yourself lapping constantly and it genuinely bothers you, that is a reason to buy a harder 1000 next time rather than evidence of a technique failure.
Nate
@nib_grind_nate
Tunes nibs on a loupe at the kitchen table and writes three pages a day to test them.
Vintage chisels vary enormously. Some old cast steel is superb, some was overheated by a previous owner on a dry grinder and is soft for the first few millimetres behind the edge. If the problem persists at 35 degrees, grind back 3-4mm into fresh steel — keep it cool, dunk it often — and see if it behaves differently.
The arm hair test is the sharpening equivalent of judging a loaf by how it looks through the oven door. Cut something fibrous instead — a tomato, or the edge of a loose sheet of newspaper.
Second thing, and it is the one people hate hearing: the squash. Hard winter squash is brutal on an edge, more so than anything else in a normal kitchen, because you push through dense flesh and occasionally catch seed cavity fibres and skin. I would not judge edge retention on a session that includes one.
You are chasing something that should not be there. The burr is a coarse-stone phenomenon — you raise it once, on the stone that does the actual metal removal, and everything after that is refinement. A 6000 removes so little steel that it cannot build a burr you could feel, and if it could, that would mean you were pressing far too hard.
On finishing stones the stopping cue is different: count strokes, alternate sides, and watch the slurry and the scratch pattern instead. Ten a side, then five, then three, then a couple of feather-light passes. Then check by cutting something rather than by feel.
Not having to flatten mid-job is the argument that got me. Ordered a 400.