Patrick Chase
Sorry about the partial replies to your very well-thought-out posts, but I'm somewhat pressed for time:

w.r.t. "edge standards" I usually hone to 0.75 um on waterstones (the infamous Sigma 13K) or 0.5 um on diamond.

I've come to suspect that for most practical woodworking uses "good enough" is probably up around 2-3 um, provided the scratch pattern is uniform, but ingrained obsessions die hard.

The scratch patterns in your pictures look to me to be solidly in that "good enough but not excessive" range BTW (taking your estimated scale as fact).