Cliff,
I usually utilize a honing sequence that doesn't produce a lot of burr and I frequently don't do a specific deburring step. If I am just touching up one of my kitchen knives or an EDC I usually just use my Sharpmaker. I hone on alternate sides of the blade at my usual 10 degrees per side. I work up to the flats of the fine rods at that angle. I usually do about 8 strokes per side per grit. I use progressively lighter pressure as I procede. My final honing is a few very light strokes at 12 or 15 degrees per side. This isn't so much intended as a deburring step (though it has some of that effect) as it is intended to compensate for edge flex or irregularities. It insures that I got all the way to the edge everywhere along the blade.
In cases where I have removed a large amount of material from the edge I try and minimize my burr before I get to manual honing and I go through explicit deburring steps. About 2 weeks ago I sharpened about 50 kitchen knives prior to going to the soup kitchen. Doing that within 2 or 3 hours requires a streamlined approach, but some of the knives have a tough alloy and/or have been abused. I used my 4"x36" belt sander for most of the work. I started with a worn 80 grit belt for the worst blades. I always grind edge-first to try and transfer heat into the thicker part of the blade rather than back to the edge. For gross material removal on the damaged blades I work a lot on the area of the belt that is supported by the platten. I keep with the coarser grit until I basically have an edge. This produces a significant burr even when I finish grinding alternate sides. To reduce this and to smooth the edge profile I do a few passes on the unsupported section of the sander. This region has about a 2 inch span from the roller contact to the platten. It doesn't create much of a convexing, but it does have a little. It reduces the burr, but does not eliminate it.
I then did a few cycles of honing these blades on my worn 120 grit belts. This was done using the unsupported section of the belt. I brought in all of my less damaged blades and honed them to a greater or lesser degree on the 120 grit belt (depending on the amount of sharpening required and the abrasion resistance of the alloy). I moved onto my 220 grit belt then to my 400 grit belt. With the 400 grit belt I superelevated my honing from around 10 degrees to about 20 degrees and did a couple very light deburring passes. Then I lowered my angle back to my usual 10 degrees and did a few more light sharpening/polishing passes. Since I was using the unsupported section of my belt I figured that the final honing angle was somewhere between 10 and 15 degrees at the apex of the edge.
I moved onto manual at this point. I took the knives to my 12-inch extra-fine diamond bench hone. This is a smooth surfaced old Eze-Lap. I superelevated my honing angle to about 30 degrees per side. I very lightly honed edge-forwards alternating sides for about 3 strokes per side (more strokes for longer blades or blades that didn't feel the same when I honed opposite sides). This is my most explicit deburring step. Since this is done without an angle guide I was free to tweak my technique if it looked or felt like I had a special burr problem. I was in such a hurry that frankly I didn't care if every trace of burr was removed from every blade. This was just a quick way to handle the majority of the blades. I finished the knives by a modest amount of light honing strokes (5 or 10 strokes per side, alternating sides every stroke) on the flats of the medium rods of my Sharpmaker, with the rods set in the 30-degree (15 degrees per side) slots in the base. I didn't bother going to the finer rods. Most of the knives could shave to some degree and it was 12:30 AM by this time.
Since I used what I considered rather clean cutting abrasives (a 400-grit silicon carbide belt running edge-first and a diamond hone) I expected to get rid of my burrs at 30 degrees almost no matter what the blade alloy. If I was using only ceramic hones for my deburring I would have gone to a higher angle (rightly or wrongly). I usually work by sight and feel when I am sharpening just one or two knives. In that case I only go to the 45 degree angle if I find that I don't get rid of my burr at 30 degrees. I push the 45 degree angle as sort of an ultimate solution when someone has a burr that just doesn't seem to be responding. Even if their estimate of 45 degrees is wildly off and their technique is bad it will get rid of their burr. There are frequently other problems with their technique, but this will at least take the burr out of the picture.
PS. I had an expert critique my edges the next morning. Sigmund, the executive chef from our local grand hotel, volunteered to help us prepare lunch at the soup kitchen. He used one of my old 9-inch MAC CK-90 carving knives for all his work. He thought that it performed very well on the cutting board.
