First Shot at Straight Razors

With the economy the way it has been I have been banking on winning a contest to get my first razor. I got tired of waiting and started reading up on restoring an old one. I picked up an A.J. Jordan Old Faithful that was in pretty good shape. I was able to salvage the scales and the blade is cleaning up nicely.
My main question is more on accessories. I understand the basics of stropping and brushes etc but I was just wondering if anyone had any personal experience with budget strops and brushes and if so what they would recommend.

I bought the poor man's strop kit from whipped dog when I got my first straight. It's been great to learn on. You will nick your first strop so I wouldn't buy an expensive one anyway.

If you've for a tandy leather near you, you might find some latigo strap there that would work. Probably would cost more than the poor man's kit anyway though.

Charlie

I second what Charlie says. You'll definitely nick your first one.

If you go to Ebay, you can search for Frank Shaving brushes. There is a US importer now who is carrying them, but IIRC the less expensive ones are still the ones from Ian Tang in China. Shipping is also reasonable. They're good brushes for the money, and they're extraordinarily inexpensive. Alternately, you could wander into a Walmart or something similar, and grad a boars hair brush for very little money.

Tandy leather stores also carry strips that you can turn into a strop.

My recommendation would be to spend less on the brush, and more on the strop. A good strop is one of the most valuable and used pieces of equipment in your straight razor arsenal. There will be a marked difference in your edge when you use a quality piece of leather to strop with.

Also, if you purchase a beginners strop, and nick it to shreds....and then decided to buy a nice strop....well you could have just bought a nice strop to start, and then a replacement piece of that leather (as you can from SRD) when it's all nicked. It would have been roughly the same cost in either scenario.

just my two cents.

whippeddog.com has everything you need for very inexpensive prices.