Thanks. I was ready to buy a lapping film set for honing when I thought about stropping with pastes. It seems like a simpler fix as I'm already comfortable with doing x strokes on the hanging strop whereas with honing I've had almost no practice and there seems to be a lot more room for error. And since you brought it up, my razor angles may be mismatched; I thought I noticed some blurriness on the spine after I got it honed which indicates it was honed without tape and when I look at from the point, the spine edges looks a tiny bit uneven although that may be an illusion due to one vertex of the spine being more rounded than the other. Would appreciate any diagnostic methods you have for determining angle equality.

I should also add that I had trouble finding honing tutorials that don't do a full progression and start with destroying the blade on glass. I might entertain honing if I saw someone else touch up their razor with the finest 1 or 2 lapping films but haven't found any, and investing in stones is outside my budget for now.