david weaver
I didn't read this the whole way through the first time. If you think it's slow to sharpen with a washita, you just don't know what you're doing. You haven't been around long enough, you're too mired in theory of one thing versus another and you haven't mastered much as far as subtlety goes (I've been there).

If you keep at it, you'll move on from your thoughts at the end of this that the cutting speed of stones per grit size actually has something to do with sharpening fast. It doesn't. I sharpen faster with slower stones. Harder and slower. If you do this long enough, you will, too.

That aside, if the washita isn't fast enough for something, a fine india is far faster than most 1k synthetic stones. It's pretty uncommon to need to use a fine india in the regular course of work, though.

The beauty of the washita isn't that it's cheap. I clean labeled stone is about $175 now. An unlabeled 8x2 stone is about $100 if it's clean and sold as a washita. the economy of the washita is in time, not in money. I can find them cheap, because I've bought about 50. People who frequent flea markets may be able to find them really cheaply from time to time, but that never happens to me, because I don't spend a lot of time going to flea markets. It's false economy.

If you're rolling your eyes because you think you could strap two chisels into guide and show that something "modern" is faster, then you're on the wrong road. Put down the MSDS, the guides, the named techniques, get three planes, 250 board feet of wood and work it. Learn to observe what a tool needs to be sharp, learn the feel of intentionally biasing things freehand so that there is no chance the tool won't be sharp and ditch the idea that the modern stuff is "better" or "faster". It's neither. It's just convenient for beginners. It was available a hundred years ago and most users never reached for any of it unless they had to grind an iron. High speed steel has been available for eons. there's a relatively popular vintage make that you can find in spiers smoothers (I can't remember the name of it). It never caught on because it really doesn't have any practical benefit.

I sense from your posts that you're at a fork in the road. You can do like I did and get tired of evaluating all of this stuff and find something efficient, or you can keep looking for methods that are crutches and that will prevent you from developing efficient techniques.

Personally, I doubt that most people who set everything aside and used three planes instead of thirty, and who forced themselves to use a washita for a couple of months would ever go back to films, diamond hones, waterstones, guides, etc. They'd quickly figure out it was getting in the way of actually getting something done. We used to believe chasing sub micron was practical for surface preparation, but that's not even the case now. If that's the way someone is tackling surface prep, they've lost the race before they've started.