I'm still new with a straight razor but I don't feel like my shaves are improving. I concentrate on angle and pressure and do short strokes. I think my lather is on point because I've been DEing for over 2 years now. Just quite painful to shave with. Even when I do remove most of the hair on the first pass, the 2nd pass is really smooth but can't seem to cut all the hairs no matter what angle I take. I really feel like the blade isn't sharp enough. I did the hanging hair test and couldn't get it to work (I know this isn't the end all be all in proving sharpness).
Now I know I can send out the blade to be honed by someone reputable, but I was wondering if this is a good chance for me to try my hand at honing. Now say I did end up rolling my edge when stropping or whatever, is going to a 12k hone, followed by CrOx and than stropping on linen/leather enough to get the edge back or do I have to go to a lower grit like 800 first? When you guys feel an edge just ain't sharp enough what stone do you start with? How many laps roughly on each medium? Does 5-10 strokes on 12k, followed by 5-10 on CrOx, followed by 40 linen/80-100 leather make sense?
I figure if I totally fail I can just send it for honing.