I recently decided to get started with straight shaving, and could use some confirmation on my thinking.

I normally shave every 2 days with a Mach3, mostly with and across the grain, against in some spots, using a shave gel (non-foaming). By the bye, switching to a decent shave soap (Taylor's) and my old badger brush gives a better shave just on its own.

I bought a Cyril Salter razor (marked Solingen on the blade) and a Dovo strop plus yellow paste (the pure fat sort). Test shave: nothing. Was so blunt it didn't even pull, just glided over, although it felt sharp in a kitchen knife kind of way. Got a couple of nicks from using too steep an angle to the face and it digging in. I wasn't entirely surprised, to be fair. A hanging hair just glides over this baby.

Next step was to buy a Norton 4000/8000. I've given it a couple of 'aggressive' pyramids, and a couple of normal ones, according to Randy's guide in the files area. A hanging hair catches on the blade now, but doesn't part. A test shave naturally results in a shallower angle, closer to the face, and I can handle cheeks and neck just fine - but still can't touch chin or lip. The quality of shave where I can shave is poor; there's still a very obvious stubble there to finger tip feel.

My thinking is that the blade still needs plenty of honing; could I be right (or wrong) on this? I am stropping adequately, I think - 50-60 strokes each way; I did dig in a couple of times on my first run, but that problems fixed now. Shaving technique needs some work, too, but with my cheeks as a test area, I think I'm pretty ok for gradual improvements there.

Thanks in advance,