Mark, thanks for your comprehensive compound overview. Much appreciated. 
I would like to use this opportunity to share my opinion what happens on the edge during honing on leather wheel without any compound. Please take it with reserve it was not yet verified by any authority in metallurgy or engineering.
My idea is that during dry honing we are shifting dozens of surface atomic planes towards the cutting edge. Because BESS sharpness of 150 gf corresponds only to several hundreds of iron atoms near the apex than several dozens of shifted atomic planes may improve the apex sharpness significantly.
This process is not uniform along the whole edge because steel is composed of grains with random mutual orientation. So within one grain we can shift dozens of atomic planes while in the neighboring grain, with different orientation, this number can be significantly different.
So called slip planes group together within a grain, form slip bands, and are visible under optical microscope.
Jan
I would like to use this opportunity to share my opinion what happens on the edge during honing on leather wheel without any compound. Please take it with reserve it was not yet verified by any authority in metallurgy or engineering.
My idea is that during dry honing we are shifting dozens of surface atomic planes towards the cutting edge. Because BESS sharpness of 150 gf corresponds only to several hundreds of iron atoms near the apex than several dozens of shifted atomic planes may improve the apex sharpness significantly.
This process is not uniform along the whole edge because steel is composed of grains with random mutual orientation. So within one grain we can shift dozens of atomic planes while in the neighboring grain, with different orientation, this number can be significantly different.
So called slip planes group together within a grain, form slip bands, and are visible under optical microscope.
Jan