After many attempts, I'm happy to say that I finally honed my razor to extreme sharpness. It took using the norton 4k until it was sharp enough to shave arm hairs, then polishing on 8k, then 20 laps on the coticule, then 20 laps on a diamond pasted strop, then a horsehide strop, and finally a smooth strop. But now it's the sharpest razor I've ever used!

I learned that the key is not using any pressure - that's what I was doing wrong.

Hopefully I can repeat this marvelous achievement (or was it just dumb luck???)!