First couple of shaves...

I've just recently bought myself a DOVO 5/8" Carbon Steele Straight (Honed by Lynn, Thanks :D) and have been gathering courage to finally take the plunge into the land of straight shaving. I have been a DE shaver since the start of this year and was pretty comfortable with proper pre-shave and lathering technics so I figure why not :).

My first shave was a bit patchy after 2 passes (WTG, XTG) and touch-up as I was struggling to get my hands in the right places to both see where I am placing the blade and holding it steady enought to get a nice angle/stroke in. Having read this forum (and B&B) for the past few weeks I had the same issue as most people starting out have with trying to get a nice shave on the chin area so I left it alone after a single N-S pass which was ok for a first shave I think. No cuts or rash so I was pretty happy but I probably wouldn't have gone on a date with the results.

2nd shave this morning was fantastic, no patchyness and a pretty close shave, not BBS but a consistent shave over the whole face and neck (minus the chin but its much better then yesterday) that is starting to catch up to my DE results.

All in all I am very happy and will continue to shave with the straight and see how my face likes it after a few weeks, I know I've got some serious homework on honing/stropping to do but I look forward to it.

A couple of questions I have now that I'm actually trying this out myself.

1. After the shave is done, some people say to dry the blade and strop it before putting it away, is stropping nessisary after a shave? Some people say yes, some people say no. I will strop before my shaves anyways.

2. I noticed that inside my scales can sometimes be some water left over from the rinse off, after I dry my blade and put it back in the scales, I pull it out again and the blade has some dropplets on it, should I be worried about potential rust building up faster then it should? Do you guys dry the scales inside and out before putting the razor away?

Cheers,

You don't ever want to see droplets on the blade before or after the shave. Rusting is immediate in my experience - the longer the water sits the deeper the rust. How is water getting into the scales during the rinse-off? If it's an issue, I wouldn't rinse off, I'd wipe off with cloth or soft paper. I take a lot of care to be sure I don't get water anywhere that I can't easily dry off, but if I did see water in the scales I would get it out or at least not close the blade while it air dries

I guess I am just too vigorous when I rinse off the blade and the handle/scales get wet. Water would then run into the middle where the blade would sit. I will take your advice and let the razor air dry before I put it away.

Thanks for the tip :)