David Weaver
..isn't unicorn related, or entirely.

There's a certain interest on my part to talk about how fast a stone works because some uni work is further buffing on the flat face, and some not. Some stones or oxides that look spectacular under a microscope, but may take a minute or literally have to be used after a finish stone as they won't remove all wear in a minute.

I'll comment about that.

This is more related to just seeing what exactly is going on at the edge of a blade when (in most cases) the bevel side is buffed to a polish, removing any deep scratches so that the actual depth of the stone's work can be seen on the back.

- Fast and coarse is mediocre unless fine enough to buff (then ok if you want to).
- Really fine and slow is OK if you want to stand over the stone and rehearse something unrelated in your head for a while
- Pretty fine and really fast is excellent for day to day work because you'll complete what you do each time you sharpen without having to count seconds close to 6 digits or scream each time you run into a contaminant right after you sharpen

There may be some usefulness to also compare the stone scratches to a buffer edge just to see if you may not feel the need to buff something after the stone because the finish difference isn't much (e.g., it's still a lateral move in clean wood to buff edges, and it's easy to do worse- a good crisp sharpened high polish edge in clean wood is always long wearing and strong pulling into the wood).