Hey all!

I have been interested in straight razor shaving for a while now, but have been too intimidated to post here and buy equipment necessary.

However, a couple weeks ago i was buying my mom a new set of kitchen knives at our local cutlery store. I figured, heck, i'm spending $450 on knives, i may as well ask if they'll give me a deal on the cheapest straight razor. I walked out with a cheap Dovo solingen delrin handle straight razor, and a short Bismarck canvas strop/canvas both for $70.

I've been self-educating and youtubing, and have been shaving with it for about 2 weeks now, and feel somewhat comfortable with it, though not with the results. I'm 18, but i've received the hairy genes from my mother's side, so my beard is dense and grows annoyingly fast, one of the motivations for switching to straight razors.

I've been experimenting with technique (pressure, angles, etc), and i have improved somewhat since my first shave. however i am still getting a rather rough and unsatisfactorily close shave. I'm sure some of it is due to technique, which i figure i'll eventually get better at. I'm not sure if my razor is sharp enough.
I've watched plenty of videos on youtube about stropping technique, and i'm fairly certain i'm doing that well enough (there is always room for improvement.).

As far as i can tell, my razor fails the hanging hair test miserably. It'll snip a stiffer hair if coaxed, but it doesn't pop with gravity alone as seen on youtube. Would further stropping/better technique/ canvas stropping bring it to as sharp as it needs to be for a better shave?

I also have powdered Chromium Oxide, Aluminum oxide, and several bench strops (I've got an entire flank of leather, and a 1"x4"x5' in the garage). could i use a loaded strop to take the edge sharper? or would that do more harm than good?

My mother and brother bought me a pre-shave kit for Christmas from The Art of Shaving, which came with: pre-shave oil, a good sized jar of shaving cream, a badger brush, and after shave balm. I am going to try it out tomorrow, and It seems like a lot of work .

I am into sharpening my pocket knives, and like to maintain hair-whittle edges on them. recently I've been oogling spyderco's 2x8 F and UF bench stones for a while, for my other knives to replace my makeshift sharpening setup (M, F, UF rods on the base of a sharpmaker, since i do everything freehand now). Are they fine enough, or otherwise suitable to hone a straight razor?
I don't like the work involved with water stones (soaking, lapping, price), which is why i'm looking at ceramics.

As i understand it, honing shouldn't be necessary more than a couple times a year, so i'd like to have hones that could serve other purposes. Now i've got christmas money for it, but not a whole lot.

I welcome any tips or advice you all have,

-Siddhartha

thanks for reading!