Thread: First honing, failure, success and a scorched blade?

I've been using a straight exclusively for about seven months with two razors honed by respected members of the community and have started into the sharpening end of things. I picked up a few low priced project blades off of the bay. Some I have been practicing restoring with hand sanding. One blade, a 5/8 hollow marked "Lemke made in Solingen", had some minor pitting near the spine, but more or less a clean enough blade and nice enough looking edge to jump off into the world of sharpening without too much work (stifle your laughter). I have a dmt 325 and a norton 4/8k (as well as a used Nani 12k which is 'resting' for now until I can get reliably skill with the 4/8k).

After hours of watching video, assiduously reading the infamous JaNorton thread, and flattening the stones..."at this time" I did lots of circles on the 4k. When I could not get much progress (one step forward, one step back according to my arm hair) on the 4k, I got out the loupe. I saw what appeared to be a pretty decent chip in the bevel near the heel which looked to me like a standard pit. Towards the toe on one side only, however, was what looked like several fairly small chips on the bevel near what in hindsight looked like light scorch marks or bands on the metal. These chips really seemed to be on one side only and the blade had some discoloration near them, but did not look like rust or pitting. All chips were barely visible with the naked eye. I tried honing them out with the 4k, but made very little progress other than working on some muscle memory for practice.

With trepidation I went to the DMT to get past the chipping. The DMT performed just fine and it seemed to get past most of the bad parts and I was able to move on to the 4k and put on an edge which would cut hair on my arm easily and then on to the 8k for polishing. The bevel is uneven, but no surprise as it is just following the spine which is uneven even with tape. The first shave (after pastes on balsa and stropping) was sharp and seemed fairly smooth. The bay rum astringent told me that it was harsh despite feeling fairly good while shaving. It still felt like victory.

The loupe is showing those small chips near the discolored area of the blade are back (again, on one side of the bevel only) or perhaps never really went away like I thought.

This is a practice blade, so I'm not bemoaning it if it is a loss, but is this the kind of behavior I can expect from bad metal or is this just bad beginner honing? Any advice on how to approach this differently next time or from here on out? I've already gotten out what I paid for it as a learning tool...