Mike,

I've had this Bismark for over 5 years - it was my first straight razor. I shamefully admit that in that time, I treated it like sharpening a knife, my stropping was about 10 tons of weight with all kinds of pastes, and I even took it to the belt sander a few times to thin out the spine thinking that a more acute angle was the remedy....

Since finding the SRP, I was able to get some very nice shaves off of it, but it was still my main learning blade. I had left it alone for the past few months and decided it was time to really do it up proper. So I put 3 layers of tape (to make up for the spine loss on the sander a few years ago...) and here we are.

I will give it another shave test at the end of this week to see if it still quits half way through. But yes, I think you have hit it on the head - now that I feel like I have a handle on my razor sharpening, my razors have lost their handle!