ok a little background 1st i am a semi professional knife maker and have been honing and sharpening my own and other peoples knifes for many years so i figured i could save money and learn a good hobby by taking up shaving with a strait razor .................

i was pretty in informed i dont know of any one in person that shaves this way i read articals online and what not and after i thought i was informed i decided to buy my 1st razor sooooo i did something horrable i went on ebay and got me a cheap zeepk and yes i know i hear its the kiss of death

well i was astonished at how the crappy craftsmen ship i had to re shape the whole damn thing by hand and machine to get a decient bevel and well i had my 1st shave .......... two scars later i was questioning my ability to sharpen a blade months later of trial and error i got the damn thing shaveable.......sorta i have never used pasted strops or anything like that as i have always just sharpened a knife well enough to shave arm hair

finally i mastered shaving with the damn thing and i find this web site

so heres what i did i crafted my own razor out of 01 tool steel and it turned out pretty good i also got me a dovo to compair and the dovo dose work better but hey i have always made pig stickers not grooming tools so i dont think i did too bad of a job..........

dovo is very fine craftsmenship 5 stars but now i wanna get that velvet squeegie feeling ive herd about so i still got this crap zeepk strop and i hear it is horrable and i want to get a new strop (btw out of spite i melted the zeepk blade and made a scribe out of it ..... not the best scribe ive made the metal is not as hard as they claim) i want to get more into this and i have a couple questions if yall would be so kind

i hear tony miller has nice strops and i plan on getting one but i want a strop for pasting i saw some nice stickies on proper pasting (another failure on my part i got a tube of water based .5 micron diamon paste and used the whole damn thing on the back furry side of the strop i wish i was more informed huffff) and i still have no idea what the linen side is for please any suggestions?