Evenin'

Name's Zac, I'm chillin' out in Afghanistan and decided that with my gratuitous free time, I wanted to learn how to straight razor shave. So, I looked up a couple websites for a beginners razor, bought one, with accoutrements, and headed overseas.

I largely left it by the wayside but a couple days ago decided to hone and strop it and take it for a spin. It was one hell of an unpleasant ride. So I have a few questions regarding things I haven't seen in the forums.

1) I only found out some time after I bought my razor about the unsavory reputation of Vintage Straight Razor - which is where I bought my (very rudimentary) razor. After honing it, with a little help from a couple of youtube videos (One was Lynne's - top notch) I was able to take hair off the arm quite easily, and the fingernail test was satisfactory. How much can practice and (what seems to be) a decent edge offset a low quality blade?

2) I haven't seen anything so far about hair growth patterns. For an idea, my neck and facial hair grows in a down-and-out kind of pattern, straight down my neck at the middle and fanning out further along my face, so that at the back of my jaw area it is parallel to my jawbone. How does one attack that? The hair catches like a sonofabitch, and changing grips every inch or two is a bit daunting in the early innings.

3)For beginners, how often should one shave, and when is too much growth a bad idea to practice? (e.g. daily, every 3 days, etc) I'm not one to have a 9 o'clock shadow at 5pm the day of a shave

I'm still poring over forums for tips and nuggets of wisdom - I'm not wanting to drop two or three hundred on a quality razor while I am downrange, I'd rather get in the practice and lose some (more) blood here while I have nothing but time.