I had been shaving with a safety razor for about a year and made the jump to a straight razor a couple of months ago. I got a 5/8 Ralf Aust from SRD along wtih all the essentials. I can say that there is of course a learning curve to this art but I am getting better with every shave. I do have a couple of things I would like some advice on though. 1) My stropping technique was poor for about the first four weeks (too much pressure I think) and now I am noticing more drag when I shave. It has improved some since my stropping has but my question is will that work itself out now that I am stropping correctly or do I need to send it off to get honed? I hate to waste my one free honing certificate this early if I can help it. 2) I would like to learn to hone myself so as I aquire more razors I don't have to depend on someone else to do so and wanted to know what essentials I needed to get to start to learn that process. Since I would not want to ruin my one good razor learning how to hone I figured I wuold just hit up Ebay or a flea market to get some cheap razors to practice learning on. Any advice and/or comments welcome. Thanks!

Avant