Greetings!

Glad you took the plunge into straight razors! When I first read that you bought a shave-ready razor off ebay I was a little sceptical, and based on your testimony, it didn't sound shave-ready at all! Not all razors sold on ebay are by sellers who know a lot about straight razors, so their interpretation of shave-ready is far different from someone who actually has to shave with the thing!

But I'm glad to hear that you ordered a pre-honed razor from SRD. That razor will surely be honed to shave-readiness. You could always send out the razor you won on ebay to one of the members here for a good honing (found in the classifieds under Member Services).

Do you have a useable strop? It's important to strop before each use. Just out the Wiki here on this site, it's full of great info on shaving/stropping/etc. But you already ordered the Straight Shaving DVD, so I'm sure you'll get a lot of great info on there!

Let us know how the shave with the properly honed razor goes!