Thread: Buying a Hone

You don't even need a chinese. I would buy only the norton, and learn to use it. When I was beginning, my biggest drawback was that I was doing a lot of laps on the chinese, but never realised that it is a must to have a perfect edge at 8k to move up to a higher grit. You can get a fantastic edge off a good 8k, and you will learn it faster if you don't buy anything higher in grit. Learn to set the bevel, and the pyramid. When you can get consistently good edges, only then buy a high grit finisher, if you need it. If I wouldn't have a vintage coti, than maybe I would finish on crox, and didn't bother with stones. Pastes are very easy, and fast, with consistently good results.

To the OP: I would go with pastes. I have seen very few beginners who had good results with touch ups on a hone for the first time. While it seems that pasted strops are very noob friendly.