Micro-chipping is usually due to the edge being at too low an angle. Higher than needed hardness will also acerbate the problem.
Your temper is too low for the knife type you made. Try 450F and I bet the edge works better.
When testing an edge and I finding chipping, I first increase the temper by 25°, re-sharpen, and test again. I also usually increase the edge angle by 3-5° when re-sharpening. These two things increase toughness and edge stability.
You also must realize that a micro-chipped edge is somewhat normal. It is usually an artifact of the wire coming off in sharpening. Unless the edge is polished at finer and finer grits after the wire is removed, the edge will look like a saw blade under magnification. If you just sharpen the blade and strop off the wire, it will almost surely look rough under magnification. This is normal, and not a bad thing.
It actually increases cutting ability by creating what is called a micro-serrated edge. This helps in cutting soft things like meat and fibrous things like rope. Finer and smoother edges are desirable if cutting very thin things like paper and hair. That is why a razor is stropped well after sharpening ... to polish the edge smooth.
More metallurgy:
The edge angle acuteness has a practical limit set by the grain size and the carbide size. The larger either one is, the higher the edge angle must be to remain sharp. Most people talk a lot about grain size, but the carbide size has much more to do with final sharpness. Some alloying ingredients create finer carbides - like vanadium, others, like chromium, create great big carbides. We will return to this in a minute.
Simple carbon steels, like 1095, don't have much alloying to create those big carbide problems. The carbides formed in it are iron carbides - called cementite (roughly meaning - as hard as quarry stone) . These are fairly fine in size, and much harder than the surrounding matrix, even martensite.
Spheroidizing the steel bundles up the carbides in big balls and rods, This makes for easy machining, but these big balls/rods are a problem in HT and in function if left large. Proper HT will dissolve the carbides and put the carbon back into solution. Using just the right austenitization temperature will harden the steel sufficiently to tie up all the needed carbon with the iron to make the eutectoid (.85%) and the rest will revert to cementite. This makes the best steel for toughness vs hardness.
Now, back to the big carbides and hard cementite. Whatever the size, the carbides are like rocks embedded in cement ( how the name cementite came about). As the edge gets finer and finer, there comes a point when the grain size is the limit of how small the angle can be and how thick the edge is. It is impossible for the apex to go to fully "0", regardless of how high or low the angle. The grain size ( and carbide size) will make it stop at whatever size they are. It is also impossible to get the edge angle down past a realistic low angle . At a very low angle, the edge thickness becomes a side in its own right.
Some people try and make the edge at a very low angle and use strops charged with diamond compounds up to 100,000 grit. This may make for a very smooth edge, but will not pass the theoretical limit on edge thickness. IIRC, the practical limit is around 20 microns (roughly 0.020mm or .001").
When the edge approaches the theoretical maximum, the grains fall off and leave minute serrations. This is sort of like plain cement ( sand and Portland cement) wearing away. It just exposes more of the same size sand grains. This is the theoretical limit of the edge thickness. If there are larger and harder carbides, they get exposed as "chunks" sticking out from the polished steel edge. This is sort of like the hard smooth rocks in concrete ( rocks and cement).They can easily be dislodged and fall out, creating voids that are even bigger serrations.
This is why we want fine grain and fine carbides. The finer they are the thinner the edge can be taken in sharpening. The edge angle needs to be high enough that the larger carbides determine the edge thickness. That way they don't stick out as "chunks".
