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Good point. It is often easy to miss/ignore the obvious when helping someone with little experience. I should know that I'm in IT... I ask on an almost daily basis "is it plugged in?", lol.

I assumed the scratchiness was just him stropping on the cloth side. If not, yeah, that isn't good. :(

Hard to tell but after looking at it through a couple times it looks like you are twisting with your wrist toward the cutting edge and letting the spine come up on your down stroke.