Back when I first decided to try straight razor shaving, about 10 years ago, I purchased a little dovo inox stainless razor from a local barber. Hes not so keen on them, and from further conversation with him he doesnt have a clue about maintaining them, particularly honing. So I got what I believe was a dovo straight from the factory.

Being completely green, I took it home and attempted to strop and shave with it. After cutting up both the strop and my face, I set it aside until I found SRP. After trying to read almost every post on this forum, I ordered some new shave ready razors and had another go, with fantastic results!

Now back to my little dovo. Essentially I have a 10 year old stainless straight out of the factory, with probably some additional blunting carried out by myself after poor stropping.

After reading a lot of posts here, and watching Lynn's and others' videos, I came to the conclusion that my razor needed serious honing. Last night I decided it was time, so I broke out the norton 4k/8k combo.

Based on Lynn's recommendation of less is more, I proceeded to give it 10 laps on the 8k, strop, and test shave. It was basically the same.

I then gave it a little pyramid of 5 laps on the 4k, 5 on 8k, 3 on 4k, 3 on 8k 1 on 4k 5 on 8k. It was very slightly better, but still nothing like the shave ready razors I have received recently.

Now I know that I have a heck of a long way to go before I could even approach the level of quality I receive from Lynn, but how do I proceed from here? I would send it to Lynn, and it would come back perfect, but I want to learn how to do this myself if possible.

I definately havent made the razor shave worse than it did, but at the same time, its not a whole lot better either.

My thoughts at the moment after everything I have read, is that I have a razor that is very sharp, but is not shave ready, so I need to do some bulk laps on the 8k, but given I am now second-guessing myself, what do you guys recommend?

Apologies for the long post, just wanted to include the full history etc.