Would you just outright recommend the Norton 4k n 8k, practice stone requirement aside? I saw one video of them that portrayed them as underwhelming.
The photo of the little stones with the Dragonfly; they are sharpening ZDP-189.
Pretty good I'd say.
Mostly I have used them for A2 woodworking tools and the Blue Paper steel in the chisel shown. They worked brilliantly for those (the 189, A2 and Blue Paper), once you get into the higher alloy stuff then the Glass stones are obviously the way to go.
There is a chance the bad press for the Nortons is for the newer stones being made in Mexico. Years ago I read that they were not as good of quality as far as cleanliness of the grit sizes (scratchy stuff in the fine stones). I have zero first hand experience with the new stones. Mine are USA made. Put it this way; I bought an Ice Bear brand 10,000 to use after the Norton 8,000 and the Ice Bear was not as clean of grit and left scratches in the mirror here and there that were more coarse than the 8,000 left.
I had to supplement the Norton stones with a 220 / 300 DMT and snuck the 1200 King in there between the 700 and the 4,000 as seen bellow. Kind of late in the game I added the Shapton 2,000 the green stone in this photo.
These stones produced VERY respectable mirror finishes over large areas of bevel as seen here in these two photos.
Then I got all about having a set of Shapton Pros shown here
considering I had a 120 (not shown) and could get things done faster and a 15,000 so I could put a touch higher final mirror on I can say I was enjoying the Shaptons but as far as the sharpness of the edge . . . I mean the old Nortons and all in the first photo, using a Varitas Jig, produced an edge that could cut multiple curls off a single hair while it was still in my arm with enough control not to sever all the way through the hair by accident. As seen through my jeweler's visor. This level of edge could be achieved over and over without fail with not much effort on my part; just going through the motions. I never stropped these edges that are shown. The strops shown with the King stone were abandoned years before, as soon as I got the Norton stones.
So yes the Nortons were extremely capable and the added stones to that old group were for fooling around to try and get a cleaner mirror but serious satisfaction could be had from the 4,000 to 8,000 jump especially if one went a degree steeper after the 4,000 for the 8,000. I was all about polishing the whole big bevel because I like to look at it so the extra stones helped me to do that more cleanly.
Woodworkling tools take some serious wear so it is nice to have the coarser stones, 120, 220, 300 to apex quickly. Often all I needed was the 300 and then work through the rest of the stones but I wouldn't want to do it all, on hard use edges, with only a 4,000 as my coarse stone. Still I find the Norton 4,000 to be wear resistant and an aggressive cutting stone for what it is.
