Quote Originally Posted by fccexpert View Post
Bravo, I have been promoting a minimalist approach for some time. I see no reason behind the efforts of some to make the use of a straight razor some type of esoteric art. In my opinion, shaving is a simple manual skill that can be mastered by anyone with average or better hand eye coordination and a little patience. The key principle of my philosphy is:

Do what comes natural.

This applies to honing, stropping and shaving. In fact, as far as I can tell, most of the false starts and outright disasters I have seen here can be traced back to an attempt to force some type of unnatural motion onto the process.
I completely agree with this...anything beyond a razor, hone, strop, brush, and some sort of soap...everything else is a 'hobby expense'. This setup got my great granddad got by using this method his entire life. The reality of the matter is that shaving for the rest of your life should cost you more than $150 or so in gear...and lots of us here spend that every month. Heck, when I started, I only had $30 to make it through the next couple months in shaving expenses and decided to use it on a straight from an antique store, a piece of 2000 grit wet/dry, and a strip of leftover latigo from the leather shop. When I was done with the razor, it passed the HHT, TPT, and the rest of the 'tests' used to determine a good edge...heck it even shaved fine and I still have that first razor in my rotation.

The test of being a true minimalist is this: 1) Does it work. If you can answer yes, then stop...you're at a good stopping place. Being a minimalist doesn't mean that the wiki should be less than one page, it means that it should be fifty times larger than it is..."here are the top ten ways to hone a razor"...and such.