Hi everybody,

Firstly, I'd like to apologize for the length of my post, and thank those who will take time to read it.

I have been wanting to use a straight razor for a while now, so when I had a little extra cash, I went and bought a new Dovo razor from a small local shaving supplies store. I also bought a hone (a relatively narrow 4000/8000 Chinese made 60ish dollar stone), a strop (clean fabric on one side and smooth leather on the other), a brush, soap, etc.

I had looked at a lot of videos and forum posts prior to doing this so that I don't do anything stupid while trying to shave or hone/strop for the first time. When I got the razor, I went home, opened the box, stropped it and got ready to shave. The result was extremely disappointing. The blade was sharp enough to "shave" hairs off my arm, and longish whiskers, but DEFINITELY not anywhere near sharp enough for a comfortable shave. At first, I thought: maybe it's just me holding the blade at a wrong angle, so I tried lower and higher angles, without success. I thought maybe I didn't press the blade against my skin hard enough, so I tried that. No difference. After 5 or 6 passes, of which half were against the grain, the best I could get is an cheap electric razor kind of shave. I could still feel the whiskers on my skin. Thankfully, I didn't cut myself, but at that point, my skin was burning.

Anyways, I thought new Dovo razors were supposed to be shave ready, so I went back at the shop and showed them what was going on and they said they'd have it sharpened at no cost. Three weeks later, I got the razor back and it was even worse than before I sent it. I called the shop and asked them and the lady there seemed to say they were using some kind of machine to sharpen the blades... So well, I now know they're full of it...

After all that, I get my new stone wet and start honing, as shown and described on many videos and posts on the Internet. Only problem, I never seem to get it sharp enough to shave. I see guys in YouTube videos do exactly the same thing I seem to do and they grab the blade and pop a hair in mid air, no problem. For me, I have to hold the blade, both ends of the hair and pull kind of hard to finally cut it.

I looked again and again and tried at least 10 times with no success. I wasn't sure if I was pushing the blade hard enough on the stone or not, or if I wasn't using enough water, or if I was going too slow or too fast, so I tried time and time again and the best I could get is slightly sharper than when I got the razor the first time.

I'm obviously new to this, but one would think after so many times, I'd at least see some improvement, but no...

Well, sorry for the lenghty post, but I would very much appreciate if someone who had similar experience when starting could share his secrets with me!

As I'm sure you all know, this is an extremely frustrating situation!

Thank you!