Brad,

Unfortunatly, I don't think there are all that many of us who use the Spyderco trio for honing but the same rules apply no matter what brand hones you use. You need to get the bevel/edge as near perfect as you can on your coarse hone first. The fine and ultra fine hones will be used to refine the edge by polishing it. If it's not razor sharp off the coarse hone, it won't get sharper on the finer hones. It might be helpful if you had some kind of magnified viewer (30x loupe is good enough for most) to get a clearer picture of what's going on. Many times on these ebay razors there is some corrosion along the edge and you need to keep honing until you get to good steel but this is something that you can't really see with the naked eye. Sometimes you can hone such a razor up and everything feels good but when you go to shave the edge deteriorates after a half dozen strokes as it's actually crumbling and chipping. By the sounds of your description though, you did not go far enough with the coarsest hone, you need to establish both bevels and a clean edge before you can polish it up to smooth razor edge. You could try the felt pen trick, coloring the bevel on both sides then doing a few passes on the hone to see if all the ink is gone but again, you really need some magnification to see if you are honing right to the very edge.

You might want to post a query on using the Spyderco's in progression as I can only think of one fellow that is using them and I can't remember who it was but he might not read this thread if he's not interested in Clauss razors for example.


Regards

Christian