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I completely agree with Superfly.
Alot of the appeal of the straight razor to me is the challenge of starting out with no skills and cheap or homemade equipment, working at it and ending up with this magical shave I keep hearing about.
If you start off with inferior tools, you will be far better at what you do in the long run.
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beginners thoughts
for me the honing is a good bit of the allure of this. i am a knife collector spending most of my spare time with a blade and a stone i love the feel of a staight on my skin but have never had the chance to really learn how to properly "clean up" the edge when dull. i see the points in both arguments on one side you get a razor that is ready to go so no stress or worry other than cutting yourself basically starting your addiction on the other side starting from nothing and having to learn and deall with the irritation until you get that perfect edge you will respect and take better care of you blade. in my opinion anyway
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My experience is that you have to learn both skills, honing and shaving, at the same time.
If you don't have a good technique, a "shave-ready" blade won't do much. Even more, if you're a beginner you can ruing a good edge on the strop really quick.
I started with a Dovo Shavette and a shave-ready Wapi. Immediately I bought a yellow coticule to maintain the Wapi, while I was working on my technique.
There've been times, when I was ready to quit, but I decided to stick with it.
I added a DMT-E and another Wapi (not shave-ready) and continued the learning process.
Three months later, I'm starting to get some results, I only use the Shavette for traveling and I'm able to maintain the edges sometimes better than others.
