Recently I followed an experiment done by a former SRP member who tried to see how long he could comfortably shave using just one razor and one strop to maintain it (no pastes, no sprays, or other maintainers). Now I know there are many variables out there that can effect the outcome, but I want to stick to talking about some of the basic and sometimes overlooked fundamentals in good straight razor shaving, Proper Stropping Technique & Solid Shaving Technique. Oh, by the way, he achieved 6 months of daily shaving, except on weekends, before he had some razor deterioration coupled with boardroom before he decided to end his experiment. The conclusions reached by others including myself is that continuous good stropping technique and good shaving technique can make all the difference. These two fundamental pillars of straight razor shaving can sometimes take a back seat after we have been shaving for a little while. Often times our drive to continue refining these two techniques plateau after a certain level of proficiency is achieved. With stropping, this seems to happen once you can strop at a decent speed and no longer damage your blade, we end up going into an auto pilot routine and forget how important it is to continue to work and improve this subtle but important aspect of razor maintenance. The other fundamental that sometimes gets sloppy or begins to take a back seat after awhile is continuing to push ones shaving technique, I'm talking about the nuts and bolts of shaving, knowing your hair growth patterns, proper blade angle and good skin stretching. Often times one can trick themselves about how good their technique really is and begin looking to other tools such as finer hones, more expensive blades and different pastes in order to get better shaves. My purpose here is not to knock all the wonderful various items that we have available to us because they all have there place and we can argue about them endlessly, but rather I'm trying to point out that nothing will substitute for solid stropping and better and better shaving technique. Lack of technique is more often than not the cause of a not so smooth shave or the inability to get those hard to reach areas on the neck smooth. But time and again we like to attribute these poor results to a dull blade or not using the right fancy lather or so on. Anyway, to sum it up, for me, reading the posts about this shave experiment was a good reminder that the foundation of good straight razor shaving is build on good shaving technique and proper stropping and that these two principles need to be continually refined, everything else is on top of that (IMHO).