OK, I had my first straight shave over the weekend. It went about as well as I could expect. On the positive side I actually did cut stubble . On the negative side I managed to give myself two nicks (one under the nose and one under the left side of the mouth) and one good slice (right cheek). I can see beard reduction is going to take more time than I thought. One pass straight down, another pass almost straight down (just a bit of an angle to get more reduction), one pass straight up on the neck only. I didn't expect BBS or DFS (though strangly my neck and lower chin are darn near DFS and almost as easy to do as with a DE). Trying to get a handle on blade angle and razor grips (tried both hands but I think I'll stick with my right).

In retrospect it was stupid of me to wait a couple days without shaving before trying the straight; next time will be after a normal day's growth. I'm still also trying to get a handle on stropping: I hung the strop from a hook on the wall so I could get a flat surface and I spent several minutes (after lathering up to get my face well prep'd) slowly going back and forth in an X pattern on each side, but I still don't "know" if it made any difference.

I wiped the razor on a towel during the shave, rinsing once in a while. After the shave I left it out to air dry.

So there you have it. Obviously, this is going to take a while.

--Mark