They now do see the benefit of higher grit stones.

[Lemwise]

We had a slow day yesterday at work because we finished 2 boats on Thursday and the next ones are due to arrive next week. This made it a good day to do some testing. The other shipwrights claimed there is no benefit to finishing on a higher grit stone. They all use a generic no-brand 1500 grit whetstone from the local hardware store to "finish" on and I use the Sigma Select II 6000 followed by a super fine Japanese natural stone (it's somewhere in the 12000 grit range). We took 3 pieces of wood; Teak, Oak and Cherry, and 2 Stanley Bailey hand planes and a couple of Stanley Fatmax chisels. I sharpened the plane blade and chisels using my regular stones and one of the other guys used the cheap whetstone. Now it was just a matter of seeing which edge lasted longer. Not surprisingly the edges off my stones did considerable better. They lasted at least 2-3 times longer. It was especially evident with chopping a mortise in Teak and Oak. The edge off the generic 1500 grit stone rolled over quickly while my edge gradually blunted and it took much longer to get dull. I was able to chop 4 mortises while he could only manage 2. Keep in mind that all of this is with cheap Stanley steel. My PM-V11 plane blade and Stanley Sweetheart chisels last even longer. The end result of the test is that the shipyard has now ordered a Sigma 6000 and a high grit JNat

 

[HarveyWildes]

Nice!

Did both sides polish the backs of the blades as well as honing the edges?  Polishing the backs should give you that much more edge, as the grooves from grinding the blades wouldn't affect the edge.

 

[Lemwise]

Yes, I polished the backs and so did they. But at 1500 grit there isn't any polishing going on. Anyway, they finally get why I'm using high grit stones. The results speak for themselves.