Update for day 3 . . . stropping seemed to be a success! I have the premium fabric and leather, so I did about 15-20 passes on the fabric and about 40 on the leather. A few passes I never got the blade down on the strop very well, but I figure I did probably about 35-40 good passes between the two strops.

Used a mug to actually lather the soap instead of my face, and seemed to be a bit more consistent lather, especially for later shave passes.

I used the straight for actually 2 WTG passes. The second pass I tried a bit of an angle on some of the passes, so almost a XTG stroke, but not quite. On my cheeks I did a true XTG with no issues, but otherwise, second pass was still WTG. Did a third lather and played around with positioning for a ATG pass on the SR, but then grabbed the DE to finish the job. I didn't intend to actually go ATG with the SR, but mainly was trying to figure out hold/angle/position/etc. To me, the act of setting up for it a few times will probably make the job a bit easier when it comes to actually doing it.

DE did two passes - one X and one ATG. And the thing I loved is that with the earlier work of the SR, I felt like I didn't have a blade in the safety razor. Instead, it glided across the skin and cleaned up without a problem! Great shave, no nicks on either platform!

I'm quite pleased with progress thus far . . . my goal in the coming shaves is to get accurate enough to settle for one WTG SR pass. Right now, I'm still using a pretty light touch (sometimes keeping the blade weight off my face), and so some spots I miss a bit. But, again, I'd rather have two light, safe, easy runs than one messy one and a date with the styptic . . .

As for XTG and ATG passes . . . I think I'll keep playing with them on my cheek/sideburns as I get better with WTG elsewhere. No rush there, and really, my DE is getting so much less work to do . . .