Hello I'm Michael Pérez from Perú South America and its my first time in the forum.
Well, I sharpen free hand most of the time and my routine starts with a natural stone about 1k then shapton 2k , naniwa 5k and finally leather strop with PFEIL compound and everything is ok. But when i need to flatten a blade, rectify and angle or squareness, I mean remove more material, I start with my naniwa brick blue shrimp and at the beginning it works nice I can see my progress in the blade and also the progress in the stone because it wears so fast and of course its complicated to keep it flat, but in the beginning I don't mind cos I need to remove a lot of material but when I'm close to the line I need to be, I move to my reliable Extra corse DMT 220 that swears to be flat and I trust, but can't work on it because it's to slow I'll need to spend all day so I move to sand papers and keep checking my progress and its becoming so frustrating I don't know if any body knows a good water stone that keeps reasonable flatness and works as a DMT when new.