Can't seem to get to shaving-sharp.

This is in refrence to this razor, which I have cleaned up a bit.

I'm really puzzled by the fact that I can't seem to put a shaving edge on this razor. I can get it to the point where I start to feel some grab on the thumb test, and it will shave hair from my arm (albeit not very well). Then I go back onto the barber hone for some more work, and the edge seems to fail, leaving me worse than where I started.

I'm not sure what I'm doing incorrectly; I'm honing in an x - pattern, and so far as I can tell I'm not doing anything differently than when I touch up my Dovo, and that I can do successfully. The spine shows some substantial hone wear, but I don't think it's altered the bevel angle enough to cause this.

I understand that creating an edge is different than touching up an edge, but I'm simply at a loss here.

Try being gentler for the final few passes.

It is possible that you've simply not yet removed all of the oxidized steel to reestablish a new, clean, strong bevel. I've had several razors that I received from e-bay that looked like they had a good edge on them and after trying for a long time to touch them up, I only ended up successful after getting agressive, taking them to a coarser grit stone, and then finishing them.

Just another data point,
Ed

And a very good one, Ed. I ALWAYS go aggressive on the new arrivals.

That's a thought. How do I know when I've honed down to good steel?

Yes, reminds me of a Boker King Cutter I had. I thought I had cleaned it up real good and when I did my usual Eboy honing routine I just couldn't seem to get it where I wanted. It turned out there was some minor rust on the edge and I had to give it a pretty severe honing session on the 4K to get past all that to clean metal and now it shaves like a dream.

You might want to get a good magnifier so you can check the edge as you hone. If you see rust or micro chips on the edge you know your going nowhere fast. Based on the pictures it looks to me like that edge has some problems with rust.

Put tape on the spine. Use 1000 grit sandpaper, layed flat on a suface to remove the rusted edge. If you do not have a microscope look for an even shininess on the edge and perform the thumbnail test. About 25-50 roundtrip laps. From there move to a 4000 grit hone and then on to the barbers hone.
Most barber hones are fine stone in the 6000-8000 grit category. They are unsuitable for heavy duty edge reshaping with the exception of some carbrundum razor hones.

Thanks for the advice, everyone. I'll do some more aggressive work using coarser grits and see how it comes out.

When you're working with low grits, go circular and the same number of strokes/amount of pressure on both sides. I usually start with 10 circular strokes on each side a few times, cut it down to 5, and then finally do about 20 straight across honing motion strokes. Then I start working on the N4k.