A few weeks ago, I decided to take the plunge into straight razor shaving. Not having a lot of money, I went with the cheapest set I could afford: a Chinese 12k for touch-ups, the Filly strop, a shave-ready razor from the classifieds, and a cheap eBay razor so I could practice honing and stropping without worrying about ruining a good edge. The strop came first, and I went to the local Woodcraft to pick up my stone. All that was left was to eagerly await my razor. The anticipation was killing me. I even stopped shaving for two days just so I would have ample stubble to cut when my razor arrived. Then, tragedy struck: The razor never came.

I contacted the seller, I talked with my local post office, I called USPS on numerous occasions, all to no avail. I was absolutely dumbstruck. I had never lost a package in the mail before, but after dealing with USPS for what seemed like ages, I learned an important lesson: Always insure your packages.

But what I needed now wasn’t a lesson, it was a straight razor. I couldn’t go back to DE shaving, I just couldn’t, and I didn’t have enough money to buy another shave-ready straight. I had no idea what to do. But then I remembered that I wasn’t altogether straight-razor-less. The eBay razor had arrived just fine, and not knowing what else to do, I decided to attempt the unthinkable: I was going to take that eBay razor, get it shave-ready, and shave with it as my first straight ever.

Now I’ll admit I didn’t have the best tools to work with: the Chinese finishing stone, a 20-year-old, 2-sided, mystery hone I found in one of my mother’s kitchen cabinets, and 220 & 320 3M wet/dry sandpaper that I was planning to use to lap the hones. But what I lacked in the proper tools, I made up for with grim determination. With true purpose and yearning, I set to my task.

For 2 days straight, I rushed home from work and worked on the razor until I had to go to bed, stopping only to heat up some instant noodles for dinner. The razor came with a sizeable chip in the edge, so I had to breadknife that out before I started on the bevel-setting and honing. After reading, rereading, and reading again all the information in the wiki about restoring an edge, I did some experimenting with my equipment and decided to set the bevel on the sandpaper. Once I passed the thumb pad test, I did some pyramids on the 2 sides of the mystery hone, 100 laps on the Chinese 12k, and 100laps on the strop. Now I was ready to go!

I jumped into the shower and blasted through my normal routine. I even used some of my roommates expensive pre-shave moisturizer gel (don’t tell him). Then I lathered up my face as thickly as possible and began my shave. And I have to say that something truly amazing happened: Not a single hair got shaved! Not even a little bit! If I didn’t know better, I would say my stubble actually grew a little bit during the shave! It really was quite extraordinary.

Anyway, yea, I have no idea what I’m doing.