There is no magic to it. You can sharpen a knife with a brick if you're careful.

The result and rate are determined by a few things:

• Harder, more jagged grits will cut the steel of the knife away faster
• The final edge can't be (much) smoother than the grit used on it last.

It's just like sanding wood or filing your nails. Usually we start course because it would take ages to wear in the approximate shape using finer materials, then we go progressively finer to smooth out the scratches left by the step prior.

Finer media is typically more expensive too, as fine stuff contaminating course stuff isn't a huge issue but the opposite isn't true. So we want to not blow our budget wearing away all nice stones.

Personally I would not try removing chips with anything finer than 1k, and depending on the size and the hardness of the steel might drop to 300 or so. you can, but it will take hours instead of minutes.