Hey y'all, my name is Bronson, active duty military, I like long walks on the beach and...wait, wrong webpage. Lol. I'm an adrenaline addict, drag racing, skydiving, motocross, basically if it costs a lot of money or has good potential to kill me then I'm in. So, naturally, I gravitated toward wet shaving, why not spend my life savings on razors to almost slice my jugular every morning. My technology "decline" started about 2 years ago when I went from my electric back to a cartridge razor, then ditched the can-o-chemicals in favor of a badger brush and soap, then got myself a safety razor and entered the very steep learning curve of single blade shaving. I was comfortable with it for a while but always knew that my end goal was the closest shave possible, a true straight razor shave. So I took the next step and got a shavette and proceeded to hack my face apart. I finally learned how to see through my fingers (and got a shave mirror) and got myself fairly proficient, nicks started getting fewer and father in between, razor burn dropped significantly, and missed patches on awkward angles of my chin and jaw became a thing of the past. But I wasn't straight razor shaving :(. I would look online regularly but just could never find a suitable setup. I already had a few brushes and soaps, and it seemed that every kit came with a razor, strop, brush, soap, bowl, blah, blah, blah, I don't need all that, I only need a razor and strop. I didn't want to spend a lot of money on my first razor because I knew that I would likely damage it at some point with a rookie mistake, likewise with the strop, I knew I would cut it at some point. So I just stuck with my shavette for a while since I couldn't justify the cost to move to a real razor, not to mention the fact that so few are "shave ready" I didn't want to buy the razor and then have to spend more money to send it out to get honed, that sinking feeling "I own a straight razor but can't use it" while waiting for it to come back. Enter Christmas morning 2017, my wife managed to find the razor/strop combo that I had longed for. It's a Dovo 5/8" that truly came shave ready, paperwork literally said " all you need to do is wipe off the oil and give it an initial strop" PLUS it came with a certificate for a free sharpening. Also included was a latigo strop, razor oil, and a pouch. Is any of it top notch? No, but it's exactly what I needed to transition and learn the stropping game. There is definitely something satisfying about the sound a hollow ground blade makes while shaving. I was glad to become part of the wet shaving community a while back and now I'm ecstatic to be in the small percent of the population using a straight razor.
Long post, sorry, not sorry.
