Okay, I'm probably all alone on this, but here is my experience. When I started out (making razors), all I had was the standard (or dreaded) Norton 4K/8K and a DMT 325 for flattening the Norton. Plus I used a strop after the hones. I set the bevel on the DMT 325 since I didn't have a 1k hone. Then I honed on the Norton. To be honest I couldn't comfortably shave arm hair even off of the 8k until I had stropped it. The stopping was done on linen with green chrome paste and then plain leather. The finished product gave me an acceptable shave. I used this for about 5 years.

After that I added a 1K DMT to go between the DMT 325 and the 4K Norton. This greatly cut down on my honing time on a new razor, but didn't necessarily give me a better finished product.

Then I added a 12K Shapton and now we were cooking with oil!. I could actually shave arm hair (comfortably) directly off of the stone from the 12K. Stropping after the 12K gave a great shave.

I know a lot of guys don't like the Norton 4k/8k stones, but they do work. The (325) > 1k > 4k > 8k > 12k > Linen/chrome > leather progression does seem to work well and is fairly fool proof. If I was to give a fiend a razor, I would simply include a linen/leather strop with chrome paste. If I felt that they were competent with a hone, then I would have them get a 12k Shapton to go with the strop. That's it. This should last them years if not decades. If they were buying razors off of ebay or at flea markets then I would have them get the two DMT hones as well as the Norton 4k/8k. It's tried and proven. There may be a better option than the Norton (perhaps some Shapton hones?) that would save you from having to get the 325 DMT. However, it really doesn't take long to go from absolutely zero bevel (as in a new razor that has never had a bevel set) to shaving bliss with this set up.