I received a new razor recently, real nice and said to be a great shaver. It's not quite a perfect edge, though, and I have been practicing only on my side burns and cheeks because it pulls the thicker mustache and beard hairs. Before I made my basic strop, I was practicing unstropped and without any real beard prep. Boy, was I clueless...

After completing my strop, I decided to see about the quality of the edge again. This time I gave it 100 passes on a bare cow hide strop and I took a hot shower before starting. I warmed the soap and worked warm lather onto my skin, as opposed to the previous cold lather.

The results? The edge seemed twice as sharp, cut through coarser hair without pulling, and glided through the thinner hair with noticeably greater ease. It was night and day. The edge is definitely not honed well enough, so the stropping was certainly not everything here as its effects won't be significant until the edge is perfected. That makes it obvious that the preparation was a huge contributor.

I am no expert here, brand new in fact, but if any newbies are having trouble with comfort or closeness and happen to stumble across this post, take this advice from one newbie to another: Prepare your face! I was foolish for assuming it was some minor "bonus" aspect of shaving, it's clearly more than that.

Before this shave I was using luke warm or cold lather on fresh, dry skin with a blade that wasn't just stropped. Impatience was my folly, now I see this.