I would like to thank everybody here for showing me why I haven't been getting very good results (lots of reasons...)

I've been trying to get into SR shaving for close to a year now, but I couldn't find anything in my price range (broke grad student). I originally picked up a cheap "razor" from a street vendor one day, but quickly figured out that it was just a pocket knife in disguise. The thing is about 0% hollow ground, maybe -10%. After that fiasco, I found what appeared to be a decent hollow ground razor and a strop bundled on eBay. It felt really sharp, so I tried to strop it and attempted to shave. This did not go well. I pulled out about as many hairs as I cut. At this point, I found an article on stropping and stropped the razor properly. This yielded a decent shave, but only about as good as a dull disposable. That's when I discovered SRP. Now I know that a lot of my problem was that my "good" razor is on the do-not-buy list (Selective Professional Tools). As far as actual shaving goes, it looks like I'm almost back to square one, but at least now I can spot a decent razor (maybe not afford, but I can spot one ).

Anywho, now that I've ranted I have a couple questions. I have a Selective Professional strop with black leather on one side and thicker tan leather on the other. Which side am I supposed to be stropping with? Is this an adequate strop, or am I back in the market for one of those as well?

Thanks again for all the wonderful info on the wiki and here on the forums.