I'm hoping some of you guys with more experience honing can give me some input on this.

I recently obtained a couple of old, but clean razors, that were quite dull on which to practice my honing technique. Both razor were German steel. My thought was that I could master the technique without screwing up a good razor in the process. I watched Lynn's video twice, got out my Norton 4k/8k and started with pyramids.

I managed to make some improvement to the blades, but not near enough to successfully shave. My question is, how much work does it take to bring a totally dull blade to a shave-ready blade?

I'm assuming the problem lies in my technique. It would seem that 8 or 9 of the pyramids that Lynn described on his video for blades needing a lot of work would do the trick (starting with 15 passes on each side, then 10, etc.). We're not talking stainless steel or a blade with a nick in it.

Nothing would make me happier than to learn that a really dull blade could require even more passes on the stone, but I'm skeptical about that. Meanwhile, I'll continue trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong.