David Weaver
That's a generalization if they're only used a certain way. This stone is faster than a settled in soft arkansas at this point, and leaves a finer edge. If soft arkansas stones maintained good cutting speed and fineness at the same time, nobody would slurry the fine stones.

What's open to debate is how much, what to scuff the surfaces with and what level of "waking up" is desirable.

To me, this is surprisingly nice, but it's novel - I wouldn't have a practical use for it as it's just as easy to use the settled-in stone and bias the cut only at the very edge (like the rolling before unicorn).

If someone was used to the cutting power of synthetics or came over from waterstones, they might do this in an effort to try to get the stone to act like one they were used to. This kind of stuff is why there are so many arguments about what natural stones do, and then it's compounded by the fact that most new black hard stones outside of those sold by dans aren't as fine as this stone, anyway, and some of the trans stones sold now aren't that fine, either.

Cutting speed of soft stones from various vendors, even when treated the same on the surface, probably varies by a factor of 3. Dan's and Nortons softs are kind of finer and slower, which isn't really what most of us are looking for. At one point, a vendor named "natural whetstone" sold very even strong cutting softs and hards (the hards were just slightly finer soft stones), and they were the bees knees for fast cutting with novaculite - different mine, different stone characteristics despite similar density.

Last I saw that fellow's stones, they didn't look the same as mine, so I couldn't even say to go to a certain vendor to get something specific and even that is true of norton. A true hard (translucent) stone from norton can vary quite a lot, and some of the packaged soft stones look to me like pike washitas. And some of the later washita stones without a grade weren't any treat - either.