If I remember right, I read somewhere that you want no more than aka <= a sq rt jump in microns. So 25 micron to 5 micron or more (~600 grit (US/mesh) to ~3k(Us/mesh) grit), 9 micron to 3 micron (~1k(us/mesh) grit to ~8k(us/mesh) grit) or more. Seems to be reasonable... but overthinking it imho... good as a baseline/approximation maybe.
Practical experience? Depends a whole lot on how fast the stones are. I do anything (60 grit, 120 grit, 600 grit) to 1200 (9 micron) to 8000 (3 micron) to finisher (~1 micron or so)... and any finisher that isn't fast enough to go to off 8k, I don't bother with.
I've done 200, 300, 600, 1k, 2k, 3k, 4k, 5k, 6k, 8k, 10k, 12k and every combination of them you can think of. I get the same results with 1k, 8k, finisher. My 8k is very fast though. But everyone hones differently.
Practical experience? Depends a whole lot on how fast the stones are. I do anything (60 grit, 120 grit, 600 grit) to 1200 (9 micron) to 8000 (3 micron) to finisher (~1 micron or so)... and any finisher that isn't fast enough to go to off 8k, I don't bother with.
I've done 200, 300, 600, 1k, 2k, 3k, 4k, 5k, 6k, 8k, 10k, 12k and every combination of them you can think of. I get the same results with 1k, 8k, finisher. My 8k is very fast though. But everyone hones differently.