I bought a razor about 6 months ago on another forum that was advertised as "shave ready". Since I was just learning honing and stropping that long ago, I thought I'd keep it as a "reference" to compare against if I needed. I finally used it for the first time today. I did my normal stropping routine, the normal face prep and ended up with one of the worst shaves I've had in a while. It seemed to do all right WTG, but XTG and ATG were a disaster. By the time I was finished I had pretty good razor burn and stubble everywhere. I had basically gone from a 5 O'Clock shadow to a 2 O'Clock shadow.

Two lessons learned today:
  1. Have a backup razor stropped and ready when trying a new razor
  2. Do a quick arm test before trying to shave with a new razor

Has anyone else learned such lessons the hard way?