As I posted before, I got a vintage razor off of eBay and honed it up and it was a really smooth shaving razor. The next day I shaved with my Dovo, which I've had for maybe 3 weeks, or so and it was pulling a bit and recalled that it had been for some while. Having nothing to compare it with, I thought that's just the way it was supposed to be. So, I stopped and finished with the DE for the day. I took the Dovo down and gave it 5 light passes over the 12k stone and 7 passes on canvas with crox followed by 20 passes on canvas and 50 on the leather then put it away. This morning I took it out and gave it another 50 on the leather and man was that a smooth shave.

Here's a lesson for noobs like me. If you get a razor from SRD or somewhere and shortly thereafter it doesn't seem to be very sharp and it's pulling. The chances are high that 1. It's your shaving technique or 2. which I think is the case here, your stropping technique was initially so bad (count the nicks in your strop to see how bad) that you've spoiled the edge. So, I got to learn a few important lessons that noobs will learn very quickly. First, in the very beginning stropping on a hanging strop is harder than you'd think it would be. Second, it's not hard to repair nicks in a strop. Lastly, if you've dulled the edge on your razor because of poor stropping technique, it's not hard to set things right again.