Hey Ron:
I hope it's consolation to you that if at this point you received a razor from me to critique, it would only be a razor that after much labor, fine tuning, more labor, more fine tuning, a bunch of swearing and the like, it would hopefully shave as good as your 4/8ths did. You and I both want to learn and we're both in the same boat. If someone asked me at that point how I'd rate my own honing ability, I'd say thankfully I get lucky enough to have some razors that are sharp enough to shave with on a daily basis. I need SO much more practice (TIME is the factor for me) and an assessment like this will only help that or if anything give me even more motivation to work at getting better.
Chris L