Great question and one I hear a lot when speaking with people about honing. One of the things you'll find is that your honing technique will improve the more you hone. Someone with 30 razors behind them, for instance, will get more out of say, a Norton 4k/8k, than someone just starting out. There's no substitute for informed experience honing. One way to be more informed is to examine your blade edge under magnification before you start work on it and then after about 20 strokes. You'll be able to see what effect your efforts have and adjust accordingly. A $10 Radio Shack Illluminated Microscope that give 60x - 100x magnification is sufficient to examine your edge.
Honing is as much art as it is science and there's plenty of both in the practice. One big variable is flatness of the hone. Very few hones come flat from the factory or quarry. They should all be flattened. I use a DMT 8"x3" Coarse continuous diamond stone for Nortons and Belgians. The Shaptons have their own DGLP stone and they're a whole order of magnitude beyond Nortons, DMTs, and Belgians as they're flatter, they're a designed system rather than just individual stones, and their engineering is superb.
Again though, just jump in and start practicing and watch what you're doing under magnfication.
Howard
