Hello, I'm a complete beginner, and like many of the threads I have looked over, I have had some issues with sharpness. I bought a used razor from an SRP member, who said that it was only used twice after being honed by Lynn. I bought a new Illinois strop from Amazon, and I think that I'm getting the hang of that and getting it broken in, but I'm wondering if the combination of a new strop and beginner mistakes mean that it needs to be re-honed.

I'm trying to wait at least a month or longer before I buy a hone, to spread out the impact of all this on my bank account. In the meantime I'm going to keep working on my stropping technique and hope that helps. My question is about newspaper stropping. Some of what I've read says that it's fine as a substitute in the absence of a leather strop, but other posts seem to imply it's a good thing to do in addition to leather as a way to increase sharpness between hones. Is this true?