david weaver
That's a pretty fair assessment. Though the 1000 can be used after it looks like it's loaded, just by shortening strokes and adding a little water (like all stones, its best cutting power is when it's freshened, though), it's not nice to have the metal swarf on the later higher grit stones because it spiderwebs the polish on a tool.

So it's a matter of conditioning the higher stones, and then they're already flat just by condition.

The same thing can be done with a nagura, but the nagura would have to be picked carefully because there aren't many that fine, and a nagura won't do any significant flattening.