You wanna start with a sharp razor.

Did you get 'strop dressing' with your strop? I'm not sure what it's made of, exactly, but I think its like jeweler's paste. If you don't have it, you can probably get it from a knife store in a local mall, that's where I got mine.

1) put a little dressing on the leather side of your strop. This is the part of the whole thing I'm least sure of, but I think you want just a very little bit. Don't try to cover the whole surface evenly, just get some patches on there that will spread out as you use the thing and sharpen your razor on it. What I've done is just to daub a few dots across the width of the leather in a few lines, evenly spaced along the length of it. At this point, I'm not adding any more dressing because I think I used to much and now my leather is sleek and shiny (I wonder if its very effective that way?)

2) The blade is designed so that if you lay it flat on a surface, the angle at which the blade-edge contacts that surface is the optimal angle at which to sharpen it. Lay the blade flat on one end of the leather and draw it along the length of the strop WITH THE BLADE EDGE FOLLOWING. Turn the blade over, lay it flat on the other side, and draw it back the other way; again WITH THE BLADE EDGE FOLLOWING. Thus, you should always lead with the dull edge. The dull part and the edge should both be in contact with the strop (the blade is then flat, and you are sharpening at the correct angle -- probably somewhere around 5 or 10 degrees). Repeat this about six times for each side.

I've never experienced this, but if your blade ever gets REALLY dull, the linen side of the strop is coarser than the leather side and will do more work on the edge.

NEVER LET THE BLADE EDGE COME IN CONTACT WITH ANY METAL, OR ANYTHING AS HARD AS ITSELF. Any kind of nick in the blade edge is impossible to remove using the strop. It may be possible to find other tools to re-finish the edge, but to have it done professionally costs about $50.

You'll need to sharpen before each time you shave your face. I often let my hair grow pretty long before shaving, so I sometimes have to sharpen again half-way through to get a comfortably sharp shave.

3) This thing will hurt more than disposables. Keep the edge about 30-40 degrees to your face, and shave against the grain of your hair (up on the neck, up across the jaw-bones toward the ears, up on your mustache, up on your chin -- pretty much up everywhere). Always move the blade in a direction perpendicular to its edge. Any sawing motion will tend to cut into the skin.

It is very important to keep your skin taught where your shaving. You can do this by stretching it across your face with your hand, and/or (my preference) holding your head up or sideways so that it stretches itself.

I've found that, unlike with disposables, keeping my face still and moving the blade is important. It takes a while to get used to this. Be very aware when beginning of taking the edge off your face before you turn your head to expose a new area for shaving.
here's the routine:
face still
blade down
blade move
blade up
face move (skin appropriately stretched) face still
blade down...

Making such a routine of a simple thing like shaving seems irksome, but after a while it comes naturally and the routine fades away. I almost never cut myself when I used disposables. Now I draw blood maybe every fifth time I shave, but they're always micro-cuts that disappear under a little cold water (closure of the pores). Zits are less a problem than I expected, but they're definitely an obstacle. The thing I miss most is being able to shave while showering -- without a mirror.
Good luck! Rob's Pages // Anti-consumerism Pages // email me