Got the SRD honed Dovo 6/8 Special and Lynn DVD yesterday evening. Watched the entire video last night and this morning. Heeded the enclosed paper that said I needed to strop the razor, so I did about 20 laps on the palm-rubbed Filly, which had seen practice earlier in the week with a butter knife.

The sideburn to jaw WTG on the dominant right side went pretty well, so I tried it with the terribly uncoordinated left arm/hand and was surprised how easily the whiskers wiped off. I decided to do the rest of the face, against Lynn's advice. With a couple of nicks that didn't need styptic (and I'm on aspirin therapy), I finished it up WTG. It was at least as good a barbershop straight shave I wasn't impressed with 40 years ago, and maybe even better than my typical first pass WTG with a DE.

I should've left it at that, but I couldn't. I was having fun and not BBS yet. I lathered up and did a XTG. That was a bit more challenging, but didn't get as smooth as my typical DE XTG. I started to do ATG, and except for the neck (which worked fine), that felt like a really bad idea, so I did another XTG pass. End result is I have about the same smoothness as after my single XTG DE pass, but some irritation/razor burn on the jaw and cheeks, something I've never had with DE. Nivea is helping with that. Not BBS, but what's that they say? Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing?

Wiped and dried the razor, stropped it about 20 times, coated it with mineral oil, and put it away. I have quite a sense of accomplishment, with trepidation replaced by anticipation of another exciting adventure. Thanks to all here for the tremendous amount of knowledge and experience shared with newbies! It's helped immensely!