Stainless razor giving me trouble
I shaved with the razor today and I can report success!
First of all- I want to thank all of the people who took time to respond. The solution for me was a combination of many of the pieces of advice given here.
Since this was my first stainless blade trying to hone I forgot that 1. All blades are a little different and vary with the speed they take an edge and 2. Patience is a virtue.
I went back to bevel set and spent nearly 3x as long on the king 1k as usual but I got it to pass my weird bevel test- gently drawing the edge over rough skin on the side of my forefinger sort of like I'm slicing lunch meat very thin. If I can feel it "bite" all along the blade the bevel is set. This seems to be more reliable for me than shaving arm hair.
I polished the edge on lapping film like I used to do when I first started honing. 6um, 3um, 1um then strop on my Tony Miller English bridle strop.
The resulting shave was a close 3 pass shave but a bit harsh like I remember. My coticule edges are much more comfortable but this edge certainly was SHARP!!
Now- should I try to mellow the edge or just let stropping mellow it as I use the razor?
I learned a lot through this process again many thanks to everyone for the suggestions. There certainly is a wealth of experience here!