A few months ago I wrote about my progress with straight razor shaving, and how after about a year of trying, my shaves had become smoother and better. My point then was that there is some development of either touch or eye hand coordination that "clicks" in after months of practice. Since then I've had 2 other breakthroughs. One is stropping - until recently my stropping only made matters worse. I read extensively, watched videos etc but couldnt reliably improve my edges. I had been using 3" strops to avoid X patterning but then got a 1 1/2 inch Dovo strop for travel. Again, something clicked on this strop and I was able to transfer the touch to my others strops successfully. The second epiphany was gleaned from posts here about how light the shaving touch needs to be. I thought I was already using minimum pressure, but as I focused on lighter and lighter touch the shaves improved even more. My "touch up areas" no longer include my chin and I'm now down to a couple of odd patches on my neck that need a double edge touch up.
I hope this encourages newcomers to keep at it - the learning process is a long one and will have some frustrating plateaus, but persistence will pay off.