Been straight shaving for two months now and thought I'd share my progress.

To complicate things, after one month in I left the States on a military deployment, and continue my shaving in Okinawa...

I started with a 6/8 Rauh Cutlery, New York (Made in Germany) hollow ground spike and a 4/8 (really almost a 7/16) G. Wostenholm hollow ground round point. The Wostie just won't hold its edge, so I added a 5/8 Wade & Butcher wedge soon thereafter.

For my strop I went with a TM red latigo & canvas. I started with Col. Konk shave soap and a Tweezerman badger hair brush.

First two shaves were aweful, primarily due to blade angle and skin stretching. I also ruined the edges pretty quickly due to poor stropping and sent the blades off to Glen (gssixgun) for some supersharp honing. My initial lather was very poor, but improved somewhat after some advice off this board.

After about a week I was getting some okay shaves, although I was often told it looked like a cat attacked my face. Stopped most of the cuts by the end of the second week, and got my stropping technique to an acceptable level about that point too.

A week in Singapore found me acquiring Tabac shave sticks and an Omega boar bristle brush. No more lather problems! I find I prefer the boar bristle, at least with the Tabac...

Starting to get some *really* good shaves now. Shave time down to about 20 minutes. Pre shave routine is a hot shower, post shave is a rub down with an alum block, splash of bay rum, and Herban Cowboy after shave balm...

Biggest problem area shaving is the upper lip and chin. Lynn's tip of watching the blade angle on the chin really helped me out, but it's still somewhat of a problem area. My other issue is keeping my blades sharp in the tropical humidity. So far I've been able to keep them up using 20 passes on the canvas and 50 on the leather each morning, with weekly touch-ups on newspaper. I'm not sure how long that will last though. Also starting to get *rust* near the pivot. So far it's only been surface rust that rubs off with a soft towel, but I'm concerned about it setting in. Heading off to a drugstore first chance for some camellia oil...

Cheers,

- HJ