First it's great to be part of this big community, i have few questions about the balsa strop?? #1 knowing that my leather stropping technic is getting better when should i start to use the balsa strop(green oxide and red oxide)? #2 how long the green oxide and the red oxide is good on the balsa before adding some more? And the main question what does the green oxide and red oxide do to the edge? Has you can see i'm stil a newbie on straight shaving. Right now i concentrate on shaving and stropping and the honing i prefer to let that to the pro, maybe in a year or so i'll try to learn but right now i preffer the quality of the shave. I have 2 straight's and i found 1 is sharper then the other 1. The first i received from whipped dod isn't as sharp as the one i received from bagister(Zayid). I understand that the 1 from whipped dod is a 9/16 and the 1 from bagister(Zayid) is a 5/8 and there's a difference in weight but still. The 9/16 gave me decent shave but the 5/8 gave me a great shave, whould it be time for me to use the balsa strop for my. 9/16? Sorry for the long post, if you got any input let me know. Gino