I am on a budget at the moment so I bought vintage razors (two) and a Chinese 12K stone. At first I counted round trip laps with two layers of painter's tape on the spine (couldn't find my electrical tape) and inspected the edge with a small pocket microscope after every 100 laps. I continued 'till I reached 1,000. The edge was so much sharper than it had ever been since I purchased this one. I actually passed the hanging hair test. I stropped every day and after three weeks I touched up the edge with 25-30 laps. Again, extremely sharp. This last time I repeated the same procedure but I couldn't get it sharp enough to shave with. No scraping sound; the razor seemed to slide over the whiskers without cutting. Do I need to reset the bevel or what? I haven't been able to straight shave since the middle of last week. I have tried re-honing with the 12K, but to no avail. I tried the stone dry and that seemed to help, some. Still no BBS shave like I had up until this honing touch-up.

Also, do I need to clean the stone after each use and how do I clean it. I read on another thread that not cleaning can make the stone more difficult to use but there was no explanation re: cleaning.

Any help you guys can offer to this neophyte straight shaver.