I've been shaving with a straight for 3 weeks now and feel as though I'm at least starting to get the hang of it. However, despite having bought a wapi from a honemeister it never shaved comfortably, pulling and dragging quite a lot. I'm thinking that I probably rolled the edge in my early attempts at stropping, as well as putting a couple of small nicks in one of tony's beautiful strops .

I bought 3 wapi's last year on ebay so that I had razors to practice honing and re-scaling on, given that they were relatively cheap.

Yesterday I dug my 4k and 8k waterstones out of the tool box (I'm a woodworker), lapped them down flat with a granite slab and some 320 and 400 grit wet and dry paper, and honed my first edge. On the current razor I did the conservative pyramid and on the fresh one I used the full pyramid.

I'm not sure that I'm understanding the TPT well, but the little slices it made in my skin went from being slightly jagged to almost completely smooth, which I think is good. Please tell me if otherwise. I then stropped 30 laps on the linen and 50 on the leather.

The proof, as they say, is in the shaving. I used one razor on one side of my face and the other on the opposite. Both of them gave a better shave than I've had up until now, with the previously honed razor giving a slightly superior shave. There's still some dragging, particularly around the chin area, but the shave was smoother and more even than before.

I'm going to run them both over the conservative pyramid again today and see if they come up any better.

So, a good experience so far, and good to know that I'm at least on the right track to being able to keep my razors in decent shape.