Hello,

I'm new to the world of straight razor shaving as I've only had my straight razor for about 8 months. I bought a pre-sharpened 5/8 Dovo from Straight Razor Designs and after a few weeks of learning to shave I loved it. It gave me the closest shaves I've ever had. After about 4 or so months, I could tell the edge on the razor was getting worse as it wasn't cutting as close and the shaves were getting more painful. I put down the straight razor until I could afford to buy some norton waterstones for honing. Recently I finally purchased these stones and spent some time researching the proper way to hone. I did my first honing following the directions in this set of videos on youtube:

When I tried to shave with it afterward (with plenty of stropping) it had an even worse edge than the last time I shaved with it. It was very demoralizing to think I made the razor even worse, but I gave it another try today, this time really focusing on making sure the edge seemed even all the way through. I felt a lot better this time about my work and after a good amount of stropping I tried for a shave. The blade was even worse than the last time! I really don't know what I'm doing wrong here and I'm desperate to figure this out. I've dropped a lot of cash on this (as I'm sure you all know) and I wont be giving up this easily but it is getting very frustrating.

Any helpful advice would really be appreciated.

Thanks!
Jeff