well my name is Jeremy, i'm currently living in Korea. Luckily that is almost over though and i'll be back in VA. I've always wanted to use a straight razor for as long as i can remember, well i really just liked anykind of blades most of my life, that and anything that goes fast. Guess that's just part of being a guy though.

Well anyway then i really fell in love with str8s when i got my first shave with one at a barbershop. It was only to trim up on my hair cut, i was still to young to need an actual shave. That great feeling of warm lather and the fresh feeling afterwords, just ahhhh. Well then once i actually started growing facial hair i tried to find a barbershop that would do a full shave with a str8 and couldn't. I finally decided to get my own when i needed to make a reward for a goal i set. Don't remember the goal not that it matters i never met it.

I talked it up so much though that this past December my wife got me a starter set for my birthday. Luckily unlike some of the other posts i've read on here (i'm positive they meant well)i had talked to her about which ones i was thinking about getting. She got me a dovo stainless steel 4/8 frenchpoint professionally honed from CS, a 2" american made mountain strop, Italian Pure Badger Shaving Brush, and Classic "Gold" Hypo-Allergenic Shaving Mug Soap.

I looked in a few different places and got some basic info and then jumped in started using it as my daily shaver. well i thought i was doing good, but i was getting a lot of irritation and then after way too short of a time the razor got dull, well thats when i found this site and looked around a bit and found out i had been stropping all wrong and rolled the edge.
So then i bought a norton 4k/8k combo stone and went to work on redoing the edge, kinda jumped th gun a bit but hey got to learn somehow. The problem is when i did hone it i ended up with a duller blade than when i started. I came back to the forum and read a bit more and found i went to the 8k before getting a good enough edge so i went back to the 4k till it could shave the back of my hand then went to the 8k. worked beautifully. after some stropping i was good to go again, was still getting razor burn though.

Tonight i had been reading agian on here and picked up some new info about shaving angles and better lather. I just couldn't wait to try it out so of course i did and MAN WHAT A DIFFERENCE!!! Now i really am hooked this shave was awesome. Probably the best shave i've ever had. Still not BBS everywhere but most of it is and no razor burn.

I just want to say thanks to everyone that contributes on here it's really made a difference in my shaving experience.