I have been getting by on a strop alone for my first 6 months now, and I know I'll need to learn honing to make my razors last for years. So I got the Norton waterstone which so many have recommendwd, but now I understand that it has to be lapped before I can use it. With a sigh I decide that I would never find a flat surface in my house for a sandpaper lapping, so I'll need some sort of lapping stone.

So the relatively inexpensive Norton lapping stone looked like a good deal - until I found out that it's good only for Norton stones. I still need to buy other hones to play with the bevels on a couple of eBay specials. Compared to waterstone prices, there seems to be many more low-grit hones that I may be able to bevel with, offered by many companies and cheap, but of course most of them need to be lapped too. Now I see a lot of buzz on the DMT D8C.
1. Whether it's the cheaper Norton lapping stone, or the nice DMT, they come in different roughness ratings. Which degree of course do you recommend as the maximum roughness for a 4000/8000 waterstone?


2. I now see that DMT produces "whetstones" too - do they need to be lapped, and do they actually require water, like waterstones ("whet" vs "wet)?

3. It's also implied that DMT products are flat out of the box. Is this true of all their hones (stones), or does that only apply to the diamond-embedded steel plates?