I think I may be ready to take the test.

At this point, I've successfully sharpened about a dozen razors, and I just restored one that had a significant nick in its edge. I'm using a Norton 4/8K followed by a table top strop with .5 micron paste and a regular leather strop.

I had two discoveries that paved the way. The most important one was giving up the various hanging hair tests. It's just not reliable, and I didn't want to keep going back and forth between honing and shaving. I practiced and taught myslef the two barber's tests (fingernail and wet thumb), and I find them much more reliable. I leave the Norton after I pass the fingernail test. I run the thumb test at the end of a job and I can actually feel the edge getting sharper after each set.

The second thing was I had too high a standard in the shave test. To simplify things I had minimized the use of regular str8s while I was learning sharpening and did most of my shaving with a Feather. In the shave test I would compare the regular razor to the Feather and could never meet that standard, so every shave was finished with the Feather.

I was getting very discouraged, until Chris Moss told me that he had done the same thing and found that most razors couldn't be sharpened to the level of a Feather. He also confirmed that they drag a little more. That information totally turned me around. I just started judging razors on their own standard, and I became successful. The razors that pass my test now are really good for shaving.

I find that when a razor really feels sharp in the thumb test, it's ready to shave. I haven't had one fail recently.

I found using the Norton a little messy, so I'm experimenting with using pasted strops as much as possible. I'm going to set up a four sided one with 6, 3, 1, and .25 pastes. The 6/3 should be like the 4/8K according to Norton. I can then go through the 1 and .5 I'm already using. The .5 is usually enough, but I'm going to try the .25 to see if I can get any improvement. Classic Shaving says there should be. This kind of system will let me work at my desk instead of making a mess in the bathroom and basement.