Craby, Welcome I suggest you check out the wiki plenty of useful info there,

to answer your questions.

1. I know what you are referring to in resting the blade between shaves, but the general consensus is there is no need to at all to rest the blade, that said it never hurts to have a nice rotation of straights as the more you have the less you need to hone among other benefits, that and any excuse to buy another razor works for me

2. assuming your razor was pre-sharpened it should be good even as the only razor you have for several months with proper stropping and assuming you don't ruin the edge somehow, for touch ups most of us prefer something higher then a Norton 8k for smoothness and certainly you shouldn't have to go down to the 4k side on touch ups, either a pasted paddle strop with diamond paste, chromium oxide or some type of coticle or higher grit stone then 8k would be preferable for touch ups, chinese 12k are relatively cheap and there are plenty of other finishing stone options better then 8k

3. you can shave off the 8k side of a Norton and many did for years and I am sure many still do, that said see answer to # 2

4. I got the same razor a very nice shaver, I suggest if you want to keep the gold trim on it put 1 layer of tape on it when ever honing and just be consistent about it.