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I am a long time user and believer in BESS testing. However, for everyday knife sharpening, I believe the most practical testing is a combination of copy paper and how the knife performs at the cutting board.

Ken

Ken, I have found that copier paper is too easy to cut as it is thicker. A better test in my opinion are thermal receipts and newsprint from the weekly adds that come in the mail from the grocery stores.

I use the rizla green rolling paper for me general tests. If your knife can cleanly slice rizla then it is quite sharp. Sharpen enough to shave arm hair effortlessly.

I am new to tormek sharpening, but with my T8 I sharpened a stainless opinel to 15dps, followed by stropping on the tormek leather with the tormek paste. Currently this edge is tree topping some forearm hair and easily cutting free hanging hair. So I'm guessing sub-75 BESS. And I'm a newb. This is the SG-250 standard wheel as well.

I appreciate your response Peter! Yes I am not too concerned about AEB-L anymore. I actually have used the sg-250 wheel with nitro-V and CPM-154 (both at approx. 61-62RC) and they sharpened like nothing. So I am pleased with that. I do have some CPM-Magnacut that I have yet to use which has 4% vanadium so that steel may not sharpen as easily on the standard stone. I will wait and see. For now my plan is to use the SG-250 and then buy CBN for the higher wear resistant steels.

The KME is gone. Lots of negatives for the few positives that system brought. I guess my question can simply be: silicon carbide or just move up to CBN/diamond? I typically use AEB-L and CPM-154 for my knives so there is no vanadium carbide present, but I also have a large slab of CPM-Magnacut that I will be trying out and that has 4% vanadium. I moved to the tormek because I want to use water cooling for my edge setting and sharpening rather than my belt grinders. Larrin at knifesteelnerds has a great article about sharpening without water cooling and how that effects edge life.

Hello!
I just purchased a Tormek T8. I am upgrading from a KME sharpener. The kme was ok, but since I am a knife maker and use "high alloy" stainless steels at 60+RC, the kme often took 3-7 hours (!!!) to sharpen from no edge to acceptable sharpness.

My questions about the tormek are: is the SG-250 stone acceptable for steels such as AEB-L, CPM-154, and other chromium carbide and vanadium steels? Or should I skip that and buy the SB-250?
My other question is about the leather honing wheel. My thought was to buy a couple of them and load them with diamond pastes ranging from 2000 grit to 8000 grit or higher. Does that sound like a waste of time? With the kme I usually sharpen up to 1500 grit with a diamond stone, and then strop with diamond from 3000, all the way up to 100,000 for a mirror finish and roughly 140-ish BESS. Any help is greatly appreciated!