David Weaver
I sold used razors and natural japanese stones on etsy for a while, grading both before selling (to avoid selling razors that don't hold an edge well or stones that don't prove themselves out under a microscope).

I got to know a few nutballs along the way, sharpened a few razors for them on request and then found that they were on a search for I don't know what....One of them told me that he cut himself with a razor that I sent him, that he hadn't seen a razor as sharp before (this isn't an achievement, a step back from that is a better shaving edge - one that cuts hair, but not the skin lifted by the hair - that's what creates razorburn - but he asked me to make one as sharp as I could make it).

Then he started asking me all kinds of questions and sent me a couple of buffing sticks that another sharpener used and told him were finer than green chrome ox graded to 0.5 microns. I didn't find them easy enough to use to tell, but they could very well be linde B in a wax stick. The green chrome is a powder pigment. linde B is super fine and pure white.

We are used to the idea that iron oxide colored sticks are red rouge and more gentle, that blue is often a stick for plastic (sans alumina in some cases), white is aluminum oxide, gold are alumina for carvers and green are chromium oxide.

What really seems to be the case is that almost everything is mostly alumina, and then it's a guessing game as to how fine it is and honing on a clean hard surface and then a look under the scope is the only way to really tell what's what.

I've had green sticks that left stray scratches visible to the naked eye, and the same with iron oxide sticks - but I knew it before getting them except for how closely they were graded, because they all specified that the main component was aluminum oxide.

Long way of saying, find out from the sticks what you can from their MSDS and then the microscope still needs to tell the truth. If visible scratches are gone, then we can't see the difference beyond that, but it's probably not important.