comments:
You don't need any stones or stuff just starting out. You need one or preferably two actual shave ready razors, not internet shave ready razors. They can be new or they can be vintage, which TBH is your biggest bang for the buck. You do need a strop. A decent brush of course, and a bowl or mug, and a puck of shave soap. I should also point out that if you begin with one or two shave ready razors, to maintain them yourself, you only need a finishing stone, not a whole progression, because the edge is not allowed to deteriorate beyond what a few dozen laps on a good finisher can handle. Or you can continue to send out your razors. With two of them, you can send one out, or try to teach yourself how to refresh the edge on the dulled one, and still have the other one to shave with. You can get started in the direction of straight shaving, with a shavette. A shavette is a type of razor shaped roughly like a straight razor, but that uses a disposable blade. No honing, no stropping. Just shave, and replace the blade when needed. Probably the best popular shavette is the Feather Artist Club DX series. They use a semi proprietary blade. This shavette is a bit pricey but still much cheaper than a good, new, straight razor. It is slightly but not much more difficult to shave with. A bit less "forgiving", we often say. A much cheaper shavette that still works pretty good is the one I use when traveling. It is sort of a knockoff of the Feather, but it uses half of a DE blade snapped in half. BTW, Feather also makes excellent DE blades, and they are regarded as the sharpest available. Buy them by the 100 lot on fleabay and they aren't expensive at all. Here is a link to the shavette: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08J9MVBWL I do not own stock in the company and don't get freebies or renumeration for recommending it.