I've been thinking about these coticules, Shaptons, ebay specials, bevel setting, honing, finishing with high grid stones vs pastes strops (or both) and strops... what I seem to gather is that you need to develop a "feel" for what's going on during honing, especially with the natural stones.

To get started, synthetic hones sound more straight-forward: do laps on the 1,000, then the 4,000, then the 8,000 and then the 16,000, then paste strop and strop. The more I read about the coticule, the less sure I am that I'd manage to do anything useful with it.