Hi all, first post here.

I recently got a Shigeki Tanaka Kamisori, which has a Aoigami 2 blade. I've been trying to sharpen it with my whetstones but found after 2 separate hour long attempts it's come out less sharp then when I started 🤦‍♂️. Needless to say it's a bit frustrating.

My stone progression is:

Cerax 1k untill the edge looked straight (I had notice a couple of tiny chips in the blade)

Suehiro Rika 5K ~100 strokes on each side Imanashi Kitayama 8k ~ 100 strokes each side Aiiwatani San Lv 5 from JNS. 50 strokes each side with a milky slurry and 50 strokes each side with a more watery slurry.

Then finishing up with 25-30 strokes on a rough leather then smooth leather strop.

I'm first drawing a criss-cross on the stones and flattening the stones with a 140 atoma diamond plate and then conditioning with a 1000 DMT diamond plate. I also use the 1000 plate to generate slurry on the Aiiwantani and 8K stone.

When I'm doing the strokes I'm keeping both sides of the razor flush with the stones and trying to provide a bit of extra rotational pressure on the edge.

It can cut through some hair but it's not hair popping sharp and not shaving very finely at all. I've tried the cherry tomato test and it can cut through the skin but needs a kind of sawing motion and a bit of force and often cuts with a bit of a jolt and leaves a rough cut.

I've tried to include some photos of the edge but it's quite hard to get good photos on my phone.

Sorry for the essay. Any advice would be much appreciated! Hopefully I'm missing something obvious

Struggling to sharpen my Kamisori razor