This is just my two cents, but it seems like I've found that shaving an arm hair (or making one bend and snap in mid air, or letting a piece of fine silk drift down from the heavens & slice itself in half over the blade, etc., etc.) does not necessarily have much to do with getting a comfortable shave. For example, I can get my Henkel 10-inch chef's knife sharp enough to shave arm hair with a Norton IM-50 (coarse/fine aluminum oxide)...but I wouldn't expect it to leave my face in less-than-mangled condition.

So it might be a matter of going back to 1000 and slowly, patiently, assiduously working up from there. I think I've gotten a halfway decent bevel with wet sandpaper stuck on marble, but my problem with sandpaper is that the razor gets sharp enough to shave the abrasive off the paper, but not sharp enough for a good shave. I think the smaller sized DMT combos give you the most bang for your buck for personal use. They're reliable and fairly user-proof. Last time I checked, there really wasn't much difference in the price point between a pack of high-quality sandpaper/lapping film and a 6" DMT D6EF.