I have been using a straight razor for about 3 years - not everyday, it tends to be a weekend luxury. I won't shave at night, and in the morning I'm too bleary-eyed to concentrate properly with a straight edge.
I was in the barber's, and the chit-chat turned turned to complaining about the deterioration in quality of double edge safety blades. I liked the way a sturdy heavy butterfly-opening Gillette held the heat from the water, but the amount of shaves I could get out of the only freely available blades here in England (Wilkinson Sword) shrunk - to two! I suppose production has been moved to you-know-where, and that's the end of that. I remarked on the strop hanging by the side of the basin, and he said it was only for decoration, no demand any more (the Aids thing being the final nail in the coffin). I ended up leaving the shop with the strop, a pocketful of straight razors in varying states but all extremely salvageable, and all thank goodness with rounded toes. One in particular slopes like the shovel nose of a '74 TransAm. And a little hand-size blue-gray stone. These are still the only ones I've got. I cleaned up the strop with saddle soap, the blades rigorously with Solvol Autosol, which was the gentlest thing I could think of, and after honing them the best I could, I got the idea from someone of gluing chamois leather to 4"wide offcuts of formica-covered kitchen worktop which as you know is very very flat. One of these I pasted with a little Solvol to polish the bevel - I had no idea real pastes existed! - and stropped on newspaper in between - I thought that was my invention! - before finally going to the barber's strop. Inching my way through all this took months on end, but hey 3 years on it's all far better than shop bought disposables, and has definitely caused me less "cut throats"! I thought I was some sort of relic, until just for something to do I typed "cutthroat razor" into eBay, saw a myriad of razors for sale, and followed the e-trail to this site. What an absolute revelation, I feel like Captain Kirk landing on Planet Sensibleshave. Do we all feel our way blindly like this? Perhaps I've horrified you, but if that friendly barber had not given me the little stone as well, I shudder to think what i might have done to hone them. When the chamois gets a bit too discoloured I just rip it off and glue some more on. Pennies. BUT I'm promised a brand new Dovo as a birthday present, and I hope it will come as no surprise to you that, as a direct result of what I have so very recently learned from Straight Razor Place - all of you - I shall get it straight off in the mail to a professional honer! Thank you all so very much for all your help and experience, and thank you for reading this.