Quote Originally Posted by Dean65 View Post
I have always sharpened all of my razors and indeed was also taught this by my Grand-Dad as well as stropping my razors on leather. I don't use "High Tech Hones" that cost hundreds of dollars or microscopes, oscilliscopes or any other magnification products to achieve very sharp razors.
Damn! Now I gotta go get me an oscilliscope!

Dean, that was a very nice summary of the sane side of shaving. It's not rocket science, it's shaving.

As far as the stropping issue goes, I figure if someone declares a razor for sale to be shave ready, then they darn well should have shaved with it AT LEAST once. I cannot imagine shave testing a razor and then selling it to someone without re-stropping it but maybe it happens. If you are completely new to straight razors, there is a good chance that you will mess up a newly purchased razor by stropping it badly. For that reason, I think any newbie that buys a "shave ready" razor should try it for the first time without stropping it. That way they are guaranteed to start with the blade in the exact condition that the seller, honemeister or otherwise, left it. If it shaves well, great. Be happy and take your best shot at stropping it the next time. If it doesn't shave well the next time, acknowledge that you need to work at stropping and know full well that the bad shave the second time was not the fault of the seller. On the other hand, if the first shave is awful, then either you don't know how to shave, or the razor was honed improperly, or the razor actually needed to be stropped. Since you did not strop it first there is no chance you messed it up. The next step then is to strop it yourself and see if that helps. Using this approach helps determine who is potentially responsible when a new razor doesn't shave the way it's expected to.