I realize this may be a pretty general problem description, but I'm putting it out there looking for ideas from successful honers, with as much specific info as I can.

I've been shaving with straights for about two months now, and over the past several weeks have ended up spending a pile on hones. My setup now is a DMT 325, 1200, 8000 (all 8 x 3), a Chinese 12K, and a Shapton 16K is my most recent purchase.

I have several razors, 3 or 4 are inexpensive eBay "project" razors, and one or two came shave-ready from the BST. In my inexperienced hands, all are now uniformly mediocre shavers.

What I do have going is consistency - whether I completely start over on the DMT 325, or just touch up on the Chinese 12K or Shapton 16K, I have a bunch of smooth-shaving but not very sharp razors. All are sharp enough to shave with at a basic level, but none pass any HHT test, or get me shaves like I was getting with a good vintage DE. I haven't ruined any razors that I can tell, but none are anywhere near as sharp as I think they could be. Noticeable pulling when shaving ATG on all of them, more so on the ones less than 6/8ths.

I'll give one very detailed example, maybe something will jump out that I'm doing wrong. I recently got a cool Henckels 6/8ths, shoulderless with a French point and a smile (Show and Tell thread here):
- Used one layer of electrical tape, and a perpendicular rolling sawing motion on my DMT 325 to get rid of some micro-chipping and reset the edge. All strokes afterward described below were rolling X strokes.
- Did about 100 strokes on the DMT 325 with the one layer of tape
- I took off the tape, and moved to the DMT 1200, and did another 200 strokes.
- Moved on to the DMT 8000, about 200 strokes.
- Moved on to the Chinese 12K, and did about 300+ strokes (100 slurry, 100 wet, 100 dry) trying to polish out the scratches from the DMTs.
- Did another 100 strokes on the Shapton 16K
- Finished with about 40 strokes on a home made Chrome-Ox balsa strop.
- Also did abut 50 strokes on a leather strop.

The bevel looks even to me at 10X. The edge feels sharp on my thumb, and will catch arm hair above my skin, but only if angled a little downward. Still lots of scratches on the bevel portion. But not even close to passing the HHT, and the shave was really sub-par, less sharp than my usual honing jobs. Another clue is I seem to have better luck with old chopper-style razors, thick and wide. My best shaver is a W&B chopper that I did about 400 wet strokes on the Chinese 12K. That nice edge did not last long on that razor, however.

Am I over-doing it, under-doing it, or missing something in my progression? Do I just need to keep at it and gain more experience? Thanks for reading through all this!