Practice razor?

Its a stage thing. First use the butter knife to initially learn how to hold and turn and stroke and when you don't drop the think or make a cutting motion and can turn smoothly then advance to an actual razor.

Just jump in and use what you have. THe reason you bought it was to use it. Just be careful.

Unlikely as it may seem, learning to hone a razor isn't difficult if you're patient. And it is the point of it, after all, to make the process muscle memory, and painless.

So do your practice on a razor that is at least salvageable, something you'll be proud of eventually. Pure junk won' t do much but leave a bad taste.

I would go with the dull butter knife too...

I thought many things were true about this hobby of ours until the first weekend of June 2008... I went to Asheville NC and attended the First Razorcon there then returned to the Second in 2009... I learned that what we think we are telling people and what they are understanding can be two very different things...
Stropping was the most eyeopening of all the things there...
Lynn and I did honing seminars and that was tons of fun, but the thing that opened my eyes the most was watching many of the Newbs and some of the not so Newbs when they stepped up to the strops....

Yeah I would say get that butter knife out and do some practicing but even more important is learning the flip, and learning it by doing it over and over correctly, and slowly..