If you're just starting out, I'd recommend delaying the hone purchase. No matter how well-studied you are (the Wiki here) and how talented, honing is too difficult a skill to acquire quickly. It took me a month of trial and error, ruining two old razors in the process, lots of assistance from the members here, lots of practice nightly, to get to the point where I trusted myself with a decent blade. I'm glad I didn't try my nascent skills on a new or valuable blade because I would have screwed that up to. If you must start honing, I'd recommend starting out with cheap, vintage Ebay blades or flea market purchases and practicing on them. Having a professionally honed blade around to compare as a model would be helpful as well. You're going to learn by making mistakes. Don't make those mistakes on a good blade.