So you lap a hone, it feels different.

Should still cut the same more or less. It's been my limitted experience that having the same hone feel rougher post-lapping doesn't make it cut faster.
Should still cut pretty much the same, provided it's flat. The scratchier feel would be from the stone or sandpaper scratching into the surface. It does feel like one hone cuts slower though, which I guess is fine and all, but it got me to thinking, its old surface vs the new one.

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So I wonder if the "rougher" feeling hone of the same grit cuts slower due to less actual surface contact, even though I'd initially be inclined to feel a rougher surface and think it got ruined or cuts faster.
This is a very unimportant topic, as the hones still work perfectly fine for me, and I don't actually have a crisis of any sort.

When I lap my Norton 4K/8K its left with a very smooth and slightly polished surface and the razor just glides over it. Maybe you used too low grit a sandpaper and left it too rough. I don't know what effect a rough surface wuld have on honing. I would guess in the end none but it might make honing a little more difficult until it smoothes out through use.

In the end the grit size of the hone is the grit size of the hone. You can rough it up, you can polish it like glass. After a little use you are back at the actual grit size doing the work. Some stones have a fine grit medium suspended in a softer matrix or even a slightly porous one. This can create a faster cutting stone but the grit and final scratch size wil be the same. I think Norton considers their 4K side a fast, free cutting abrasive. It is also quite porous with many small spaces between the grains. Many Japanese 4K stones seem much smoother as they are packed tight, grit and matrix and cut slower.

There is way more to this, speed, agressivness, fineness but grit size is still the main limiting factor.

Tony

That in fact awnsers my question. I lapped my Norton 4k-8k and it became very smooth, almost polished. At first I thought I ruined it, the razor glides over it and it feels a bit more conservative when cutting the metal. But it still does its inteded job.