There is couple questions someone needs to know before answering your quesitons correctly.
1. how long have you been using this blade?
2. is this blade fresh honed?
3. Brand of the blade?
4. how do you strop the blade? (paste etc)
5.Please never compare straight razor to DE THEY ARE 2 different animals.

below is general answer Not 100% correct(will depends on your response)
Middle shave stropping(this is what you describe) is sign of over honing.

hope this helps.
Quote Originally Posted by BobK View Post
I'm new at this; just starting to get comfortable moving this naked blade across my face and neck. I can get a SAS shave by making 2 WTG passes; the second pass I try to go just a little XTG. When I try to do a third pass in more of a XTG direction, the blade doesn't seem to cut anything. At this point, the blade just seems dull on the skin; not sure how to describe the sensation, just that it seems dull, or like the edge is rounded.

So today I tried to test the sharpness using the HHT method. I did that before the shave, after stropping and it was sharp. I did it at 3 different parts of the blade on both sides of the blade. After the 2 passes and attempt at the third, I tried the test again, and it failed miserably. So I stropped it and then it passed the test with flying colors. Before stropping the blade at the end of today's shave, there was a whisker that was a little longer on my neck, and I tried to cut it, but the blade wouldn't take care of it. After stropping, it cut it right off.

I don't think my whiskers are that tough; I can get BBS easily on my DE setup, without needing to change blades for up to 2 weeks of shaving.

Sorry about the length of this, but I wanted to be thorough in describing this. Can anyone give me suggestions, or thoughts on what is happening? Is it normal to have to strop again during the same shave?