Well you do now. Bespoke Cabinetmaker and only ever used combination stones of who can guess what grit, I very much doubt its 600 at the most, and just think of all the beautiful furniture produced in the centuries up till mass production came in, all done on (probably) oil stones.
It’s my opinion that people like you are frightening people off woodworking as they find it so difficult to sharpen to your unnecessarily high levels.
I'm guessing you do most of your work with power tools and you sand to finish.
The fine cabinet work done 200 years ago wasn't done with a 600 grit stone. You need to look only about as far as the older texts to see what they referred to as finish sharpening (turkish oilstone, washita followed by "Emery powder" or fine corundum). These are generally on par with the finishing regimens now. I posed the same question from the same frame as you at one point because I was a fan of modern sharpening stuff and thought it was finer. It isn't. Lapidary and polishing supply was a common trade and widely distributed, even to remote areas of the US.
No offense to your clients, but most customers don't order or pay for work that's done by accomplished amateurs at this point. and I don't mean me as an accomplished amateur, I mean folks who do work for SAPFM, let alone folks who do work at the level of someone like George Wilson (who was an instrument and toolmaker more than anything else, but did plenty of carving).
What's inaccurate is the suggestion that it takes any more time to sharpen really well than it does to do a mediocre job.
If the taste has changed now to sanded plywood with trim and polyurethane or two part spray finish, that's fine, but it's not the kind of work most amateurs are going to be looking to do. They may wish to do things like cut hand mouldings, carve, or work entirely by hand. It takes about one minute to sharpen a plane iron (a little less than two if you count time taking a plane apart and resetting the cap iron) -it's poor advice to an amateur to tell them to truncate what they're doing (this is jacob's gimmick) to a level that's not capable of creating a finished surface. There's no reason for it - it doesn't cost time, and it doesn't cost any significant money to get a fine edge.
The word bespoke is a bit overused these days, too.
This is bespoke work:
http://www.cybozone.com/fg/images/wilson6.gif
George used to frequent (after he retired) an american forum. A couple of "pros" were gunning for him to tell everyone his sharpening routine because they were sure he would describe something cheap and coarse, and a bunch of beginners wanted to know it because they thought the major element of his work was probably a secret sharpening process. Both were nonsense. When he finally relented (after trying to get people to understand design and what tasteful work is), it turned out that he used either a dry grinder or a jet wet grinder followed by a series of spyderco stones and then green compound on leather to finish the edge.
I doubt anyone on here has done more work than he has by hand as he was required for decades to do it in front of people, and then after getting away from making and answering questions while making for nearly two decades, he ended up as a toolmaker, hand finishing most of the work to make period accurate tools.
I was a bit surprised by the sharpening process, but I guess not now.
The OP got his answer early, which is a good thing (from people who have actually used a tormek). I actually gave my supergrind to george, the fellow who did the work above. I doubt he uses it much, but I used it none.
If you can't sharpen quickly and finely, you'd wither in a cabinetmaking shop. Cabinetmaking has gone from things like solid wood with treated edges and carved elements to plywood and wood trim sanding the crap out of everything. That's fine, but I'm not sure how many hand tool hobbyist start dreaming of vacuum bags, spray rigs and veneer over MDF.
