So tonight my fiancée was out of the house, so as many of is do, I broke out the hones for some practice. I had previously honed out a small nick on a very nice custom razor of mine and wasn't quite happy with the result, so I decided to do it all over from a bevel set on up. My honing is pretty novice, especially on uneven edges and the like. At the end I thought I did a decent job, and decided to refresh a few other razors on my 12k while I had them all out. Luckily one of the razors that I refreshed was a humble 4/8ths Engels that was honed by one of our gurus a while ago. So when I went to shave with my big bad custom, about half way through the second pass I started getting that old beginner's feeling of a raw, not quite up to par shave...Feeling dejected and reaching for my DE, I decided to do one more pass with the refreshed Engels. All I could think as it effortlessly finished the shave was that I have a long way to go on my own honing and that a truly shave-ready edge is a thing of beauty whether it is on a $500 custom or an inexpensive eBay workhorse. Thanks for reading and happy shaving!