I picked up a pretty stainless steel Horstater the other day, which while a bit dirty, had zero hone wear and so looked to me to have never been really used. After polishing it up, I hit the hones, or should I say, a brick wall: despite all of my best efforts, I could do absolutely nothing to get the blade to cut beard. To wit,

- I began with a conservative pyramid, alternating on the Naniwa 5K and 8K stones and following with the 12K: couldn't even get it to chew arm hair.

- I then followed with an aggressive pyramid, this time on the Norton 4K/8K. Same results: throughout all of this, the spine continued to show zero wear.

- Increasingly irritated, I did the unthinkable: I taped up the spine and threw it on my DMT Duosharp 325. At last, the blade, with a great deal of effort, pushed through some arm hair. But after attempting to polish on the usual higher grit combination, it ran over beard like a butter knife.

All of my other blades are carbon steel, and while I wouldn't class myself a honemeister, I've never had any problems inducing them to take edge.
So I'm appealing to anyone out there with experience honing s.s. blades who could guide me through the process of taming this mean SOB.