Hi there

I'm completely new to straight shaving and have recently purchased a Dovo Best Quality razor (pre Honed & Stropped) and Dovo Prima Rindleder strop, to see if it is for me.

I opted to go straight in to a full shave without stropping myself to get the feel of the razor in it's best condition. I'm quite pleased with the result for a first go, 2 minor cuts in areas that I regularly irritate with a mach 3, so no real surprise.
As I say I'm happy with the result, not what I would call a close shave but nevertheless I was happy enough to leave the house. I'm expecting with practice this will improve, as all advise seems to indicate this.

I saved my chin to last and while doing this area could tell that the blade had changed, it didn't seem to be cutting as well. I finished the first pass and the tried a strop but this didn't seem to change things, but the results were OK so I finished up and left for work.

Now on my return home I have tried stropping again but I can't seem to get the edge back, testing on the back of my arm and on a long hair, I'm trying different techniques of stropping and get varying results, from not bad to very dull. When I say not bad, when cutting a long hair (in a loop) the hair tensions up before breaking.

Would you put this down to strop technique, or could something be wrong with the hone? Could a poor strop ruin a blade so quickly?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers, Pete