touchup or finishing?

I've completed my 4th shave with a GD form Ken Rup. Kudo's to such a fine kit for the price...

I have the Filly strop with crox on the back. I know this is to be used every few shaves to touch up the edge with about 5 laps.

I wonder should I have a barber hone or finishing stone to touch up on then hit the crox then leather? I keep wondering is 40-50 for a barber hone here or the bay worth it when Naniwas/nortons/coticle yellow stones are availble for a bit more to double the cost?

I like barber hone as a thought for easy touch ups. I like the naniwas since lynn uses them and they from whats stated a nice finisher and the coticle is a good stone with a variety of use's but finishing/touchups?

I know there is no end all answer but I can't seem to make sense of what info would lead me to start down which path... any help/info/thoughts would be appreciated. Oh as a fyi... I see myself as a particular person who generally enters something and wish's to do the best possible to near perfection if that helps hahaha.

J

From what I understand the CROX isnt to be used until a ways down the road when the razor starts to dull, which I would imagine would be more than 4 shaves. Unless you have used improper stropping technique. I also have the filly and have yet to even think about going to the paste yet and I have probably 10 shaves on each of my razors. I have seen warnings about going to it too soon as it is very abrasive and if you are not perfect with your stropping it will destroy an edge fast. As I have said though I havent used it yet so I cant give advice about the use.


Edit: All the stones you have listed will work from what I understand. Barbers used barber hones for years for touch ups. Anything higher than 8000 grit should work. The coticle is supposed to be a great finisher and when using one of the methods, from bart, in the wiki you can reset a bevel all the way to finish on one stone but as I understand it they take some practice to get to that level. A cheap option is the chinese 12k, which I have seen good mentions of around here, but they are very slow. There was a thread a while ago by holl4pirating saying to drop everything and go get a naniwa 12k, there are a lot of positive things said about the great finish off that stone but they are expensive. Of course there are also the Jnat finishers, take my advice though and do tons of research BEFORE buying one, I learned the hard way that all sources are not the same(theres a few good suppliers right on this site, 2 or 3 in classifieds this week). You will pay good money for a good stone, but there are bargains, just be cautious. Or the cheap easy way and get a 4 sided balsa strop and use different pastes, there was a poor mans strop setup in the classifieds, dont know if they are still available. There also are getting to be lots of positive posts about SRD's felt strop and diamond spray. Like you alluded to there is not one end all answer, different strokes for differnent folks.