Hello folks,

I read the wiki, watched a ton of videos, and felt prepared to sit down and set the bevel and hone a blade I'd polished up.

I put a single layer of tape on the spine as I felt that since it was an antique store find with some hone wear, and since I'm a newb I didn't want to make its hone wear any worse.

I have a Norton 220/1000x, a Norton 4k/8k, and an SRD strop with the webbed material with chromium oxide. I started out with the bevel by doing circular motions on the 1k, I probably did about 30 circles on both sides. Then I did X strokes on the 1k until I felt the blade was passing the thumb nail test quite well. I tried shaving some arm hairs off, they came off if I tried hard but they certainly didn't pop off. I did some more x strokes, after the arm shaving test but it seemed to have no increase in sharpness.

From there I decided to go on to the pyramid, I started the pyramid at the wiki's 25 figuring since it was extremely dull and the bevel had just been reset this is probably the time to do the full pyramid (i.e. not just touching up a previously sharp blade).

After the hones I did 30 laps on the webbed fabric + chromium oxide. Then I stropped it for 120 laps or so.

I tried shaving with it. It did the job but my skin feels pretty raw.

I put it under a cheapo microscope that I have from a long time ago, and started looking at it to compare to the Dovo I have sharpened by the SRD fellas. The Dovo edge seems nice and straight, no little nicks out of the edge at all, it just looks like the end of a brand new chisel the whole way along. The edge of my hone job is not a perfect straight line, and here and there there's the tiniest little "chips" I guess out of the edge. Little bites almost. Under magnification they look like a chisel your wife used to open a paint can.

Of course I didn't do a very good job honing, but that's what this is all about, trying to learn till I get it right.

What do you guys suggest I do for the second try? Do I go right back to the bevel setting stage?

Thanks.