I have Norton 220/1K 4K/8K and a Naniwa 12k SS. Not a huge selection of different stone like a lot of you seem to have but apart from the cost I am 100% sure that owning every stone ever made will not help me 1 bit until I get the dagbern bevel right.

I'm going to start again from scratch, probably today.

I have watched loads of videos, gxgun, Job15, a chap called big nose shaver, and a guy called italian stallion. Anyway my takeaway is that although the bevel set techniques are a just a little different in all videos I saw and that there is more than 1 way to skin a cat. The techniques are all basically similar and they all make bevel setting look so simple and easy.

Well that is not my reality so I think that I am going to need to start again and bevel set either until it is done right or I don't have any razor left.

I do have a loupe but to be completely honest, I don't know what I'm looking at, obvously it's an edge but you know what I mean I'm sure.

I have marked the edge with a sharpie and have tried different strokes untill I got it all off. Circles seem to get it all off.

I have read on here about the limitations of a USB loupe/microscope but i have one that I have not used before. Maybe i should send some before bevel set, during and after pics with it?

I would love to try and shave with just a good bevel bfore I moved on, it sounds like a great way to perfect each stone before the next but at the moment, just shaving arm hair has made me sore from repeat quite firm stroking to get some hair on the blade.

Exciting when i see some arm hair shave though even if do press hard enough to hurt.

Question, if I have tried different strokes to see if I can remove the sharpie before I try anything too clever as Job15 explained in his video (unless i completely missed the point) and discover that circles seem to be the way to get the pen off the length of the blade. Do I do those same circles that are working throughout the whole progression to the exclusion of all else.

It occurs to me that if the way to get the pen off was circles and nothing else seemed to do the trick, anything but those circles won't hone the blade all the way along at any grit, am I missing something?

Anyway, would pics be worth sending, I could do a video but I'm not sure if it would help much - or maybe it would. I got excellent advice from the shaving videos i uploaded and I really improved quickly because of it.