It's quite hard to get hht 5 off anything but adamantium blades and nano pastes on silk scarves wafted across the edge by a northerly gust off migratory swallow wings during the solstice.

I get good shaves off all my razors, but they only get honed once every year or so, and I don't own or use pastes. You do not need to paste your blades to get good shaves.

However, pastes are cheap and easy and there's certainly nothing wrong with that, particularly when you consider the prices of a complete stone set, and of some the finishers out there.

I don't know if there's any long term effect of daily pasting. I suspect there's decreasing returns as you abrade away the edge and have to start dealing with larger distances, but this also eventually happens with the more traditional approach. For me the question would be about rate.

James