1st straight razor shave, couple problems

Look at the avatar that I use. It shows the motion used on a hone. It is an X pattern and has the edge leading. When using a strop the only thing to change is to have the edge trailing,

Here is the contents of an email from the Yahoo SRP post that you may find helpful.
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For a more "controlled" stropping example, the first two videos on
this site was helpful for me:

http://www.nassrasur.com/norbert/norbert7.html

Granted the above videos show stropping on a pasted stretched leather
paddle strop - but the motions are slow and can easily be repeated on
a taught hanging strop.
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Remember that you can always use the smooth side of a belt as a substitute for a strop.

Hope this helps,