Hi everybody,

first of all, I want to thank you for creating this great website, it has led me from being frustrated by the quality of Mach3-shaving to actually getting good shaves with a straight.

I bought a very nice shave ready Dovo stainless steel razor two weeks ago and shaved with it a couple of times. My stropping technique must have been rather bad, because I had the impression that the razor sharpness decreased rapidly. Then the worst thing happened: during a shave I accidentally ran part of the blade against my faucet which caused the razor to be quite dull. It was in the middle of a shave and I was stupid enough to still try to finish it and cut myself a couple of times (nothing serious, though).

Afterwards, I wanted to repair the damage by honing the razor to a shave ready state. I spent several evenings trying to accomplish that, but I don't think I ever came close. I use a Norton 4k/8k combo and I think I technically did everything right (lapping the hone, rounding the edges, doing an x-pattern stroke on the hone with very little pressure, pyramid).

A few days ago I bought another Razor, this time a relatively inexpensive one from the classifieds. I just used it and had a really good shave (my technique still sucks in some ways I guess, but the razor was really sharp and it was very enjoyable shave).

So my frustration with not being able to hone the Dovo is still there, but I now have a reference. Of course I thought about sending the razor to Lynn for honing, but then I would never learn how to do it myself.

What are your suggestions? I fear to remove too much material when trying to get it shave ready and honing it for whole evenings ... I also don't really know when I'm on the right path. I read most parts of the wiki about the sharpness tests, but the HHT does not really work for my hair (I just had a great shave with the classifieds razor, which didn't pass it). The TNT works when the blade comes off the 4k side, so I think the bevel is set correctly but I'm not really sure.

Is there anybody in the Minneapolis, MN area that can help me with this?