Originally Posted by
DaveW
What you could do with a straight and what most people do with a straight are two different things. A bare bones straight system (with someone assisting you in buying a good straight at low dollars) would be:
* self made strop with about $10 worth of leather (direction on finding the right piece of leather is useful, though - type, finish, smoothness, length)
* a razor with minor cosmetic issues that's not an *it* name off of ebay, but otherwise with little use and a full life ahead of it ($20)
* a razor hone to keep the razor sharp ($20)
That's literally enough for a decade.
To those of us on straights, a cheap blade that's good would be something like astra - which is about 13 cents per if you buy $100.
What people generally do with straight razors, though, is buy $1000 worth of razors, $1000 worth of strops, $500 worth of soaps and sky is the limit on stones.