I've been looking into buying my first hone for my carbon steel straight razor. I used it for a few months and kept a good edge with a leather strop. I used red dovo paste on linen once but was not too sure if I was overdoing it with the paste so I stopped using it. It is time for honing and while sending it out to be done professionally would be quick, simple, and fairly inexpensive, I'd rather do it myself since I need to learn how to hone sooner or later. The main question is what is the minimum amount of different hones I will need to hone and get a really good edge?

I've read on here that the Norton 4k/8k is pretty much the starting point for any starter hone set but have also read that the 8k will leave the razor shave ready but not completely finished for a nice shave. Is this true? Also, I figured if I bought a 12k Naniwa it would act as a nice finisher and if needed for bevel setting and such, I could just spend some extra time honing it but read that it would take days to set a bevel with 12k but I am not sure if it was an exaggeration or it would literally take days .

Any suggestions to keep the cost down? Keep in mind that I want the bare minimum and I have a fairly new blade so I won't need coarse hones for restoring . Wish I could dish out the money to buy a few hones but then my bank account wouldn't be too happy.