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Salutations from Bulgaria!

Welcome aboard! The Bismarck should be an excellent choice. I love my Dovo Carre which is the same blank, different scales. A good leather strop is important.

I would also recommend reading up on pasted balsa strops. My 50k/100k/200k diamond pasted balsa strops keep most of my straight razor edges extremely sharp without any additional finish honing. I just use a 2"x3"x12" piece of balsa for each strop. (25cmx75cmx300cm)

Enjoy!
 
Welcome to B&B, and thanks for the long post - it was anything but dull and a great read for a Saturday morning.

Sounds like you've jumped in on the stones. A strop is the one thing you can't do without - that or some other method of stropping (newspaper, denim, seatbelt webbing). A blade will lose it's keenness after very few shaves. If I'm reading that right and you got more than ten shaves without stropping, that's a lot - I tend to give it at least 20 passes on leather before every shave and before putting the razor away.

Some nice kit you're accumulating there - looking forward to hearing how it goes.

Thank you for the kind words and liking the long story. Unfortunately 1 year has passed since this post originally and some things have changed. I had a Solingen straight which I butchered and made an ugly frown. And the Dovo I sold because, well I didn't want to ruin it. I tried reading up on how to hone a razor but never did understand what setting the bevel means. Everyone says that it's set when it's set, which means nothing to me. Also I have to invest some good good money for stones which I cannot afford at the moment. The easiest way would be for someone to show me in person but that won't happen soon. Anyways I still love the idea of shaving with straights but I will leave it for another time in the future. I basically substituted the straight for a shavette with which I got pretty decent. Then December I got my Henson razor and haven't looked back. I can shave daily with it and get BBS's which was all that I was looking forward to!

Welcome aboard! The Bismarck should be an excellent choice. I love my Dovo Carre which is the same blank, different scales. A good leather strop is important.

I would also recommend reading up on pasted balsa strops. My 50k/100k/200k diamond pasted balsa strops keep most of my straight razor edges extremely sharp without any additional finish honing. I just use a 2"x3"x12" piece of balsa for each strop. (25cmx75cmx300cm)

Enjoy!

Thank you very much! All of this will come in handy in about 5-10-20 years when I decide I can afford and manage having a straight and honing it myself. These posts won't disappear :)))
 
Glad to hear you are getting great shaves with your Henson. And that you have a shavette in your repertoire.

I can't imagine having had the time and money to take up straight razor shaving and honing as a hobby when I was younger. I had to get the kids out of the house first!
 
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