Woodcraft has 15% off on Shapton stones, at least the ones that Shapton recommends for woodworking tools (1000, 5000, and 8000 grits). I've been using scary-sharp but not getting that have the "hair fall off your arm in front of the blade" sharpness that I've been looking for. Since I've been trying more and more to avoid the use of sandpaper on my projects and to use planes and scrapers as exclusively as possible (I'm finding that this is actually faster than sanding since one doesn't have to progress through grits), I used this as the justification to pull the trigger and try the Shapton system. Got the stones home and unpacked and pulled out the blade on the #4 smoothing plane. In the process of going through the first stone, my hand slipped and the blade contacted my left thumb -- yep, even at the first grit, it's sharper than anything I've gotten thus far. [Dang, that smarts! -- it took quite a deep cut into the corner of the thumb]
After getting the bleeding under control and some bandaids on it (I figured that the ER would just butterfly it shut anyway and charge me $200 for the privilege of sitting around bleeding for 2 or 3 hours), I progressed through the 5000 and 8000 grit stones. While the finished sharpening doesn't have the mirror surface I was getting with scary-sharp, I can honestly say that I have never had scary-sharp provide the sharpness that this does -- the blade shaved forearm hair with no effort and was producing very fine shavings in ash that was quite course-grained.
With a couple of process changes for safety, I'm a happy camper. I'll have to get the lapping system in the future. Even for the price, I'm still in it for less than I would have paid for a Tormek or other electric system.
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ If you're gonna be dumb, you better be tough +--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+