david weaver
Last night, I recalled that system being marketed pretty heavily about a decade and a half ago when I first started woodworking. The melting point (I haven't read bill's post, he's light years ahead of me on this stuff) sounds like wax with a lot of paraffin in it, but who knows...

At any rate, I have tried a lot of things, but never got that one and I remember the wheels being colored, but I don't remember the separate paste. The process that you describe is great with a buff, especially if the edge doesn't need to be ideal.

I love to make skinny little knives out of files and use them to mark and cut things, cut out paper labels for packages (just so much nicer than scissors) and to cut cut down my boxes for recycling. They sharpen really well on a system like that on the gray scotch brite and the 5 micron buff, but once in a great while, they need to see an india stone to get the edge reset to perfect geometry.

I've never used this system for chisels, but I like the bias at the very edge described elsewhere. My early experimenting with a hard felt buff and a leather disc kind of let me know that I'd keep the straight blades on the stones, and then subsequent changes went toward slower and harder finish stones for the final bias. It's really lazy, and it prevents chipout.

As far as geometry goes, I'm sure with most larger gouges, it's possible to maintain pretty good geometry just with buffs and wheels, but I'm also sure it takes a long time to master.

(not advocating gray scotchbrite, just mentioning that i use it in the same way. I should've been brave enough to post that I thought you might be talking about the koch system, because I remember their discussion of the media liquifying instantly when coming in contact with a tool - it's also one of the few things I've never tried, despite my outsized fascination with sharpening as well and as fast as possible)