Hey. I came here mostly to get a feel for SR brands and creams and whatnot.

I am very confident in my sharpening technique, yet I don't want to do something stupid.

I am familiar with sharpening freehand, I got into sharpening through sushi knives, and take my stuff to a pretty high polish...about .5 microns.

So a straight razor is just a HG hunk of very hard steel, no? It seems that there are VERY different conventions on equipment here rather than kitchen knife forums, perhaps I am just used to a more severe acquisition disorder being the norm? Seems like mostly the rule of thumb here is to have your razor professionally honed, and strop it yourself...whereas I am used to the norm being to buy about $2k worth of stones, strops, hones, compounds, pastes, sprays, deburring blocks, etc etc.