Boy am I glad I found you guys.

Without boring you with my life story, I'll cut right to the present. Because of the skipped story, I have decided I need to shave as close to every day as possible. So, I start doing so and soon i realized that close enough is not good enough. However, to achieve the level of smoothness i wanted, I was going to spend a small fortune on a good razor or on hundreds of crappy razors. My beard is like a wire brush, using a disposable 2-blade bic it would take 3 just to get through the first pass, and a fourth to do the final two passes. So, I turned to the internet and after some research and a trip to e-bay, i settled on trying my hand at straight razor shaving.

I order a package on e-bay from "Selective New York Strop Co." It came with a strop and 3 razors. I couldn't find any reviews on the company, and the price was low enough I was milling to take a risk. Got it just last night in fact. The strop seems to be of good quality (the 'hardware' on it is kinda chintzy though) and the razors seem to be of good steel and were damn sharp.

So, all excited, I grabbed my starwars mug, new stuff and headed for the bathroom. I washed my face, lathered up some William's Shaving soap and began hacking away.

Most. uncomfortable. Shave. EVER.

Luckily, i hedged my bet and also found a cheap vintage razor from Germany that a shaving enthusiast honed before shipping. So today after work I took a good long hot shower and even threw some conditioner on my face to help out. Lathered up the soap again (I'm really digging the whole shaving brush thing), and went to town. I skipped stropping because I didn't want to hurt the blade on accident, but it didn't seem to hurt anything. Shaved like a dream. However, this is definitely something thats going to take practice and patience. I need to work on technique because I missed a lot of spots, despite having gone over it so many times, and I need to figure out how to make certain passes without blocking my view. But it felt good, and it gave me hope that maybe I haven't been full of shit and I just might take up straight razor shaving.

Anyway, thanks for listening. And I look forward to soaking up your expertise.