Hello & welcome to TSD. As you have already found, there is a lot of knowledge here & people are willing to share. Enjoy your stay here, jump in & participate as much as you like.
Welcome to TSD . I lived on the Stanford campus for a year. My dad was a visiting professor at the Law School, so we had the "benefit" of having campus housing. It was a long time ago(I was in 2nd grade), but a nice year.
I fully advocate total commitment when going to straights. I don't agree in using a different razor for "finishing up" or when you are in a hurry, or hung over, or just don't feel like it. For me, a lot of the learning process was learning how to do those hard areas and finishing up, especially if I were in a hurry, etc. I suggest you plan on taking a while before you get a good shave (for me, about 90 days). Also, it took me almost a year before it was just as easy to straight shave as it was to use a DE. Good luck
Thank you for the encouragement as I was thinking the same way though mainly because I dont really have back up shaving. Never like the electric... always felt like a bad shave.
Welcome to TSD @pandajye ! Glad you joined us & I hope you have great success learning SR's. If you'd like some daily coaching there are a couple members of The 30 Day Rule/Focus Group that can offer hints, tips, and tricks. They are daily straight users, either long term or just recently started. That's unfortunate. I started my Wet Shave experience on a Sight Unseen from Larry. He was very attentive and shipped fast. Hope everything's OK with him. He's started many shavers with their first well honed razor. If you are happy with a vintage razor there's many to choose from. Find an acceptable Honer to put a good edge on so You'll know what it feels like. Good idea to get two razors. Then you can send one out for service and still have a back up.
Yes, and it seems like he is just busy. Larry got back to me and helped me out with a lot of advice and even an instruction on how to shave. Regrettably his stuff is in high demand so wasnt able to get a SR from him but got a brush and strop. I also let him know if he finds a japanese SR or Kamisori. Definitely wanted to send some business his way as I have two cheap brushes (boar and synthetic) along with a strop from the Etsy person. Pretty happy to have choices in everything other then SR right now since I only have one of those. It will come tomorrow so will start my adventure soon