Quote Originally Posted by RedGladiator View Post
I'm a beginner with zero stropping experience. Honing services cost £30-35 or $45 in UK, a brand new shave ready dovo costs £80. While I plan on honing myself in a few years if I'm going to hone more than 6 times a year I will just buy the hones and try to learn how to now.
Unfortunately, learning straight razor shaving is all backwards. In the beginning, when your maintenance skills are the worst, you need those skills the most. After your shaving technique improves, your now improved maintenance skills are needed much less.

Assuming that your stropping skills are good and the fact that your planning to refresh with paste when needed, my optimistic guess would be 2 to 4 re hones in the first year. A second razor is a really good thing to have and that would cut out one of the re hones assuming it came 'really shave ready'.

My advice would be to put off buying stones at least until after your first professional re hone. By the time you need your second re hone you will have a better feel for how often you're going to need it and your shaving and stropping skills will have improved dramatically.