Cut throat razor is blunt

Dear Daniel, My question is…

I have bought a Dovo cut throat razor and leather strop with the yellow labelled paste. OK - from reading your other replies I gather that this was a fundamentally bad idea (I was previously using Gillette Mach 3 razors).

Basically it was not quite sharp enough to shave when I bought it and since then I've only succeeded in making it blunter by stropping. Now I don't think I will be able to return either strop or razor at this stage, so that one's out the window.

I think I've done various things that you absolutely shouldn't do with these, which include rinsing the strop (making it deformed) and pressing down too hard on the razor when stropping (when I first got it before I knew better).

I've pressed the strop under heavy books to flatten it again, but it's possible that it has been damaged. I may also have damaged the edge of the blade, but don't really know how to tell.

Besides cutting my losses and abandoning the project, do you have some advice on sharpening the blade. I realise that you said it took you years being trained by a professional, but I'm guessing that it didn't take this long before you were first able make a blade sharp.

The strop has had the strop paste rubbed into it. My current technique is to hold the strop out horizontally (not taught, slightly bowed) and brushing the blade up and down the strop with the back of the blade resting on the strop (twisting the razor over onto its back at the end of each stroke), the blade makes a quite high-pitched scraping sound as I do it.

I'm putting very little force down on the razor, basically just enough to hold it on the strop.

Thanks in advance for your help.

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