Hello and a little help

I'm Joel and, after searching this forum, I have picked up straight razor shaving. I found a Wester Bros De-Fi 34, Durham Demonstrator, and a leather case for 30 bucks at an antique mall and dove in. I had the Wester honed and have used it twice on my neck with pretty good results. No nicks yet (besides the tip of my thumb doing the hanging hair test) and less irritation than disposable cartridge razors, but it isn't really smooth yet. I splash hot water and tea tree oil then brush on shaving cream. Nothing fancy. My razor edge is a little more knife like than it could be. I would like to find someone in western WA state that could properly hone my razor. And any advice or pre-shave ritual would be appreciated.
-Joel

First off hello and welcome, I do not know anyone in that area personally so I can not help you there. Perhaps if you check the members map you could find someone. As for honing there are plenty of members fully capable and you can find their services here. Hope this helps a little. I will leave pre-shave advise to someone more knowledgeable

For preshave, I definitely recommend making an effort to shave after a shower. Also, if you have a very coarse beard, a little conditioner rubbed into it and left on for a minute just before you step out of the shower can make a big difference. I used to use the tea tree oil, (from The Body Shop?) and I loved it for a while, but I recently started just using Proraso pre shave cream and probably wont go back, as the preshave cream softens my beard much better.
As far as your lather, everyone on here could spend hours talking about it, so it would probably be a good idea to go to the wiki and look at the tutorial on creating excellent lather.

Hope this helps!

I'm new to straight myself and couldn't quite get it smooth at first as well. I do the hot shower and conditioner trick and use Trumper's skin food as my pre shave conditioner. What I really found made the difference in getting a close shave though was when I started making uber lather. There's some decent directions for making it on the wiki as well as a few threads in the preshave and soaps and creams sections of the forums. Also, remember that when you are shaving that it's all about beard reduction, not beard elimination. You won't get all of your hair in one pass of the razor. Once I figured that out the closeness of the shave went up dramatically :)

Hope this is what you were looking for and welcome to the community, Joel!

Western WA, eh? I used to live over there! Lived in Puyallup and worked in Tacoma. Sure do miss that mountain!

Welcome to SRP!!!

Welcome! Well...the pre shave is super important as far as im concerned. Hot shower and some conditioner on the beard courtesy of my lady is the start of mine. Follow that with a good lathering and your on the right track . I go a lot further and get great results but I can be a little obsessive so maybe im going over board. If you want all the details you can check my post in the beginners forum called "The zen of cutthroat" you may find it helpful.
As far as honing your razor both SRD & Vintage blades LLC offer the service via mail for around 20 bucs and it takes about a week sometimes less I believe.
Best of luck hope this is helpful