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Hello to All & Glad to Be Here

My name is Alan and I've been straight-razor shaving since 2011. I split my time between the Boston metropolitan area in New England, USA, and the Vosges mountains of France, where my wife is from. (However, no stay in France for the time being thanks to Covid.) Mostly self-taught as to honing and shaving with straights, although I have sat in on a few sessions with my friend Ertan Süer in les Vosges and learned quite a bit from him.

I started out with an Arkansas oil-stone progression as the stones worked more slowly and I could better learn from my mistakes without introducing too much wear. In recent years, I've pretty much settled on a fine DMT > 1k/3k Suehiro trad synth water combo > coticule used with water only > Welsh purple slate used with sewing machine oil as to a consistent progression. Sometimes I will substitute a Solingen crayon-type red pasted leather strop for the purple slate, and I normally use either plain linen or cotton for touch-ups or a Solingen crayon-type black pasted leather strop for a stronger touch-up. Can keep a couple of razors going for months and years that way.
 
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Welcome, never seen a combination of stones like that but you obviously found what works for you :cool:
 
Thank you all for the warm welcome. Apart from my preferred progression as mentioned, I have tried quite a number of other progressions and I am not completely tied to that one, although the Suehiro 1k/3k combo syth is hard to beat for setting things up for naturals afterwards. One US site that is worth checking out IMO is Griffith Shaving as the owner sometimes sells local stones from Rhode Island, where he is based, that are most interesting and work quite well.
 
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