I find this quite interesting.

I honed my razor 4 shaves ago. The first shave was fantastic, the second not so great but still good, the third was absolutely miserable and I was convinced I needed to hone the blade again.

I then started looking through some old postings and discovered a procedure posted by Joe Lerch that describes how he tests an edge and his process for sharpening that edge.

I followed this and determined that my razor really needed some extra stropping. I had made great stropping improvements thanks to some excellent advice I received on another thread but for some reason I was still dulling my edge. So I went back and found a video by Scott (honedright) and tried to mimick his hand positioning along with reading the description on Classicshaving.com's "How to and why".

So I went and followed Joe's guide using a better stropping procedure and going really slow to make sure everything was OK. The result was a much better edge, so much so that I passed the test Joe described. The ultimate test was next, I shaved this morning.

It was just like the first shave after honing. I got BBS in all areas except 2 that I just plain missed and my skin looks and feels great.

The moral of the story: Learn to strop well. It's the backbone of razor edge maintenance. Learn the "feel" of your blade's edge so you get a more accurate understanding of what you need to do to sharpen it. Take it slowly.

I was absolutely convinced I had to rehone this razor when all it really needed was a few extra properly executed strokes on the leather strop.