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How toothy do you leave the finished edge?

I use magnifying loupes whenI sharpen and my finished edge is usually kind of polished grind marks. That is, I am pretty aggressive on the leather wheel and leave a polished bevel that is shiny but not perfectly smooth. The fine marks are polished out.

If I am trying to get a special kind of sharp, I will spend quite a bit of time on the hard strop and get it smooth under 4x magnification.  Under 1000x it is probably still a ragged edge.  This edge is very sharp for test cutting but is slippery in normal use.

I get a straight razor as smooth and polished as I possibly can.  12000 water stone.

One of the best working edges is a well burnished edge left from proper use of a smooth knife steel.  It is a long lived consistent cutter.  That has got to be raggedy as anything.  I grind my kitchen knives maybe once a year and steel them every time I use them.  And they cut.

But I don't understand why.  The fine polish is sharper but the toothy edge cuts better.

What do you do?

+1 for asymmetry and water stones. The water stones will give the traditional convex bevel that these Japanese knives are designed around.  The rounded bevel is why you can't see it.

I would not do a straight razor on a Tormek. The Japanese stones work real good for that.  Lay the razor flat on the stone, there is a reason the spine is that wide.

Once I get the bevel where I want it, I take one more very light pass on the wheel on the burr side.  I try to get the burr even on both sides much like the feather on a straight razor.

I occasionally run into a blade steel that galls very bad.  Not sure of the metallurgy, but it might be ferrite "smearing".  When this happens, I find myself chasing the burr back and forth at the leather wheel and I have to take a couple alternating strokes with a crock stick to cut the burr at the interface with the apex.  These are extremely light strokes, not even the weight of the crock stick.  Then finish the leather wheel and then a barber's strop to convex the apex the tiniest bit.

First Post
I was surprised that someone had finally quantified "sharp".  I started in the sharpening hobby as a quest to find out how sharp is "sharp".  I haven't gotten all the way there yet but I get a little closer with each knife. 

With a good hard high carbon steel blade, I can get to whittling curls of hair. For production sharpening if I don't get to treetopping I missed the correct bevel and I start over.  I suppose sub 50 is my standard.  I have been running a Tormek for quite a while, having worn out 2 SG stones.  Not broken, not damaged, but actually used up.  The only piece of kit I use other than the stock SG 2000 is a barber's strop.

The most challenging cutting test I have done is a newspaper chop.  One full sheet of newsprint chopped all the way across with one fast chopping stroke.  Without a very sharp edge you will tear the paper.

I am looking forward to sharpness advancing to where the BESS scale is obsolete.  Everybody will be getting blades sub.01 and we need another scale.