First of all I apologize for yet another thread focused on a blade not being sharp enough. When I first got my straight razor I read everything I could of the forum and learned that patience and developing stropping and shaving technique will make huge differences so everything will get better over time. I went through the same first steps as everybody else: it hurt to shave, it constantly tugged at the hairs instead of cutting them, I couldn't seem to get a consistently good shave (either hair was left on the face or skin was taken off leaving me bright red for days), etc. Over time I got better at maintaining consistent blade angle while shaving and using a light-pressure stropping technique with the strop laid flat on a hard surface. I stopped having that feeling that I had removed half my skin, but the tugging and catching kept happening and the shave was just never as good as my safety razor. It still hurt but I learned to just ignore the pain. I took the blade to a straight razor guy in my area to have it professionally sharpened and honed but it seemed to make no difference.

Flash forward, it has been over a year now and honestly I don't think I've made any more progress in a year than I made in the first month. During my shave today I got so frustrated that I decided "screw it, I've had it professionally honed and sharpened and spent untold hours stropping this thing, I might as well ruin the edge and start over just to see the difference." So I did the unthinkable and went back to the strop with a high-angle approach and plenty of pressure, knowing it would absolutely destroy the edge. I then tried to shave with it again to see the difference and was shocked that it was exactly the same! Aaaarghh! What was the point of all those hours of carefully and patiently stropping just the way I've read and seen demonstrated if it had no effect whatsoever?

After a year of nearly no progress I am about to give up. What in the world am I doing so wrong that I could do such a horrible thing to my straight razor and see no difference in the quality of the shave??? If you can't tell, I'm kind of hating myself for doing that with the blade, but I'm honestly glad I did because it affirmed that something is going incredibly wrong in the process.