I think we've all become a little spoiled with our 8" long stones.

I've watched a couple old timers use a barber hone and they both used a circular stroke...basically keeping the blade on the same spot of the stone and doing small circles while moving the blade across the stone rather than the one continuous sweeping stroke along the full length of the stone that most of us are used to.

Now having said that there is no reason you couldn't use the back side.