So I recently purchased a Dovo Inox 5/8" hollow ground blade. I bought it from Classic Edge Shaving in Canada. According to the website each of their razors come honed and stropped shave ready. Last week I received the razor and tried shaving with it. Things didn't go quite as I hoped. Afterwards my skin was fairly irritated, I had a good amount of nicks, and my beard still had the slight feeling of stubble in some places. Today (about a week later), I shaved again. This time my beard hair wasn't nearly as long, but it was still a good amount to shave (probably average guy's 3-4 days growth). While my skin isn't as irritated as the last time and with considerably less nicks (I'm learning!) I am still lacking that completely smooth feeling from a really close shave, as I still feel a little stubble. My beard normally doesn't grow in very full or thick, but the hair is definitely coarse. Thus, I am thinking that in the future I may have to do 3 passes to get it completely smooth (I have only been doing 2 because of the irritation); only time will tell though. Also, I have been using an electric razor for like the past 5 years, so it has been quite a while since I used any kind of razor blade on my skin. Thus, my skin might just need time to get used to using blade again, hence the irritation.

Questions!:

1) Does anyone else have coarse beard hair? Do you experience this 'stubble' feeling even with a straight razor?

2) How do I know if the razor was honed well? Because I am not entirely convinced that it is as sharp as it should be. I have stropped the razor before both shaves (although I did strop it a lot more for this second shave as the first shave went pretty poorly). It cuts and I can hear that subtle grinding noise as it goes across my beard, but it doesn't glide. Now I am completely new to straight razing, so it is entirely possible that I just had unrealistic expectations of how these shaves would go. I am new, so I know part of this is my technique, which will improve in time (hopefully), but I am just curious as to how much of it is me and how much of it is the razor. How do I find out? I am not too keen on spending $30 to get it rehoned just yet if there is a possibility that it is all just user error.

3) Have any of you experienced similar situations when you first starting straight razing? Is this normal?

4) [Kind of unrelated] Has anyone ever used Truefitt and Hill's sample shaving creams? When I've been shaving with their creams, eventually it kind of dries out a little and if any of it is near my nose it sort of starts sudding and blowing bubbles all over the place when I breath. This is kind of annoying. Has anyone else experienced this?