I'm going to explain how I've learned to hone my razors but this is so different from the methods usually advocated that I suspect I may get some criticism - however I want to make clear that this is not a troll. I'm just explaining what I've found works and throwing it out there for comments. I'm also quite a newbie (only been using a striaght for about 18 months) so I may be missing something and am absolutely not in a position to tell anyone else they're wrong, even if it sometimes seems that way to me.

I've got a Corundum Brand razor hone (it's a 115S if anyone cares) that I bought off ebay for $10. Every couple of months I lather this up and give my razor a few strokes (literaly just back and forth 3 or 4 times). I then shave straight off this and if I find it's not as good as I would hope I'll do exactly the same the next day - once I even had to do it a third day to get the edge I wanted.. Having honed the razor I then go back to stropping on an unpasted linen and leather strop before each shave and I'm set up for another couple of months.

Originally my razor was honed by theinvisibleedge so if I was starting from a razor in really bad condition maybe I'd need a Norton, Coticules, Pasted strops, etc although having said that I do have a couple of Wapis that I got in factory condition and honed up in substantially the same way (with a lot more strokes admittedly). I'm getting great shaves using honing equipment that cost next to nothing and with minimal effort

I question whether it's really necessary to spend a lot of money on waterstones and pasted strops if you only want to maintain a shaveable razor. Sure if you're fixing up razors with essentially no edge to begin with or honing out chips in the edge you probably need all this stuff and to hone in pyramids and so on, but for me it's just not necessary. As I said I'm not a honemeister and this is just what works for me.