Good afternoon everyone, i need a little help. I started straight razor shaving about a month ago, bought professionally honed and ready to shave blade and had no problems picking up shaving technique and absolutely love shaving now, actually cant wait for my beard to grow.

I am however struggling to learn stropping technique, i believe i have probably dulled my edge through incorrect stropping with a hanging strop. I am yet to buy a hone for my razor as i have only had about 5 shaves, is my next purchase. I have been reading though that a dull edge can be restored using the canvas side of a strop, but i am struggling to find information of how to use the canvas side. Im guessing technique is the same as using the leather side, but i was wondering about pastes. I bought a grey paste supposedly used for the canvas side, however what i have manage to read is many people seem to use the canvas side without a paste. My strop is still very new and the canvas side is still yet to be used, would i need to paste for the first time stropping.

If anyone can shed some light on how to canvas strop it would be much appreciated.

Joe