Originally Posted by
holli4pirating
Your numbers are quite familiar to me; I believe we both learned them from the same person (Lynn). In all honesty, the numbers depend on the honer and the hones and, quite possibly, the razor. I am still playing with the numbers to find what is optimal for me.
One thing I can say is that I tend to do a few more X's when honing smiling blades, because during the stroke, each part of the blade spends less time in contact with the hone than it would if the edge was straight. But again, how many more strokes depends.
I strongly believe that, while fixed numbers can give you a very good starting point and save you a lot of experimentation, honing routines must still be based on personal experimentation.