Yes, that's the easy way. I never go higher than 600. Mostly I use a very old Boy Scout "carborunum" stone or a Eze-lap diamond 600 grit hone. Sometimes I don't even strop. The edge seems to last way longer than the edges I used to have back when I obsessed over "how sharp can I get this thing?"
We had recently moved from the peoples republic of marylandistan to the great state of Texas. Over the past few months of settling in, we've been unpacking more and more stuff to get the house more like a home. That meant lots of boxes to break down for the recycle barrel. I used, of all things, the SAK tinker I found in a junk shop a few days after our arrival in Georgetown. Hardly used, very dirty and with the original factory edge a bit dinged up. I gave it good bath in Dawn dish soap and some mineral oil in the joints and have been using the crappola out of it. So I pout it to work cutting down the boxes. With the unstropped 600 edge, it cut down enough cardboard boxes to build a house, sliced off miles of green plastic shrink wrap and bubble wrap from lamps and dishes, and was still cutting. After it was all done, the blade was dragging a bit, but it took all of one minute to touchup the 600 edge with the little red Eze-Lap model L hone. It's been sharp now for the past month, with some cutting jobs, and no need to touchup yet.
In the past when I put a fine shaving edge on a SAK, or any other lower end stainless steel, it didn't last with cardboard. With a courser toothy edge, it's whole different ball game. YMMV. Maybe.
