Just a month after getting my full hollow Birsmarck Registered well honed, I find it's suddenly seeming dull in the last few shaves --- shaves ~15 and 16 on this hone. I'm still just six weeks into SR shaving. I typically strop 20 passes before and after shaving, on a well oiled Whipped Dog poor man's strop, using an X pattern.

So, my initial diagnosis: mis-stropping.

Since I lack good anchors from which to suspend my strop, and I do have a valence style sink with a long, flat counter, I lay the strop flat on the counter edge, and strop the razor in a right-left motion.

I've been very lucky/good at avoiding flipping the blade edge down and nicking my learners strop. But, I often notice when I strop, unless I've just rubbed in a couple drops of oil on the strop, the surface feels a bit viscous and tacky -- so I tend to oil it almost every time.

Theory 1: the blade's not square with the strop. Now that I've got a good blade flip going, I like to speed up, but when I speed up, I find that I'm slightly tilting the scales and tang into the direction of the strop, so that the blade is about 15-20° off square. Is this dulling my blade?

Theory 2: too much pressure. To deal with the aforementioned strop tackyness, and just because I'm still not fully familiar, in order to keep the spine and edge of the blade in contact with the strop I find myself using a bit of pressure.

Anyway, I started finding the blade riding up over the whiskers using technique that a few shaves ago would have given me a good, close WTG pass, and ATG pass requires more pressure and multiple passes to get a less close shave. So, I'm experiencing rapid blade dulling.

What I tried last night is a balsa wood and grit touch up. The balsa is the one which comes with the Whipped Dog kit. 20 blade strops green then 20 more red, then 40 strop passes (slow and careful and square) on the strop. This helped. But it's still feeling like it could use more.

So, what about my diagnosis?

And, what's the best way to regain as much of an edge as I can given my tools?

FYI, I have two other blades which are in better shape to shave with, but am noticing some premature dulling there too. The Torry half hollow and the J Wostenholm wedge both seem to be maintaining their edge better - I presume because they're thicker steel blades.

Thanks!

SingingSteel