Yes, and to be entirely candid, I've used wet/dry paper with spray adhesive on granite surface plates, too. Usually when cleaning up a sectioned case's edges, but I've sharpened knives and chisels that way, too.
The microtome paper differs in three ways. One is simply that it has the adhesive already, with peel-off release paper. The backing is Mylar and is thinner and harder than paper. The abrasive is remarkably aggressive. I designed a three-axis hand-held 1911 sear jig about 30 years ago based on using the "papers" adhered to a scrap of plate glass. It takes no more than ten strokes on each grade to arrive at an angle-corrected and mirror finished sear nose. However, the abrasive dulls about that quickly, too. The third correction takes a lot longer to make.
I also put thin strips of the stuff on a hardened and ground plate about 1×4 inches, with a ground recess the thickness of the papers along one edge. This I use with my Garand/M1A hammer and sear jigs to serve as a series of slip stones, but ones that work faster than normal.
