I decided to use the Chosera stones to remake the edge. My goal in doing so was to have as highly refined an edge as I could get (and my Shaptons are at home) because I wanted to take the edge to a super polish and then step backward with the strops so we could see the individual scratches from each grit really well. I set the angle at 15° per side and began sharpening the knife with the 400 grit Chosera, progressing through each grit all the way to the 10k Chosera. I didn't stop to photo each grit, waiting instead until I got all the way through. Here is the knife edge at 10k:

Next I wanted to see what the effect of plain leather would be so I used some horse butt strops, top grain out, moistened with distilled water:



I decided to look at split grain leather too, so I used a set of strops, also horse butt, but the split grain side:



Interesting...

Things got even more interesting at the next phase. I wanted to use a more gentle abrasive so I could get to the super polish more quickly, so I chose 1 micron boron carbide from Hand American for the next phase:



You can see the flattening of the ridges. The polish came up quickly and I had to put a polarizing filter on the scope.

You can see the effect that Tom so often describes displayed very well here: the deeper scratches are revealed as the bevel gets more polished. They've been hiding in all the refraction from the many surfaces of the previous grits.

Next I went to .5 micron chromium oxide, also from Hand American:



The polishing continues, ridges continuing to flatten out. We're getting closer to the valley floors.

In the previous two images, the immediate convex shaping of the edge is apparent. I didn't use very many strokes overall with each grit and yet the shape change was rapid. Note the little sedge or grass shaped scratch at the bottom of the bevel toward the right edge of the image - this little scratch stays with us for quite some time and serves as a useful reference point when comparing scratches. There are also two deep, parallel scratches in the middle that we can track.