First of all, I live in Holland, so if my english looks crooked I apologize, for it has been many years since I left school...

Second, I recently bought a straight razor to shave with (obviously) after I found out that the blades for my GMach3 were too expensive. I had some experience about 10 years ago with a straight. On my right cheek it shaved perfectly, but on my left cheek I dug it in and was left with a cut razorwide. After that I looked at the razor with great respect, but never trusted it to come near my face again...

So, some weeks ago I bought a new one. Just a simple one form Solingen (no DOVO or somthing like that). When I tried to shve my armhair they broke off just above stubble-level (about 0,6 mm remained). So I bought myself a strop and begain stropping. No result. Again I made myself an extra strop (as leathercrafter I now know what kind of leather to use) and rubbed it in with green paste.
Stropping on the green strop and straightening on the blank strop gave me (after some stropping) a good result on my arm.
As I have read many topics on the forum I did try the HHT, but no result on this.

OK, let's go to shaving... What a dissapoinyment. The razor slipped over the beard as skiing over snow with a lot of sand over it.
Again back to the stropping, armhair OK, HHT not, bodyhair (about the same thickness as my beard) could only be cut with a cutting movement like slicing bread. Shaving....well... just some hairs in the lather but no clean shave.

I've tried almost anything except for honing. But I wanted to postpone buying a stone for about 6 months or so and train with it on some old razors I have lying around, before putting this razor on the stone.

Please help, where is it going wrong?

(in the meanwhile I am still traing with Jaguar with changeble blades, good results and as time and practice goes by, even less cuts)