Welcome to the Straight Razor Edge Friday Special! Hey, Eric here with Adventures in Wet Shaving and welcome back. It's good to see you. If this is your first time here and you're interested in learning how to straight razor shave and all things straight razor related, go ahead and hit that subscribe button. Then click on the bell next to it to be notified when I upload videos. That way you won't miss a thing. In tonight's Straight Razor Edge Friday Special, we are looking at Strop Buying Guide for Straight Razor Beginners. Steven Davidson commented on one of my videos recently and he said, can you do a Strop Buying Guide for Beginners? Beginners often get information overload looking at their first drop. So any help you can offer would be awesome. And Steven, thank you so much for your comment and this is for you. So here we go. I'm going to be demonstrating with my CY Grand Slam. This is three inches long from here to here and this is 1316. For our first drop, I got this just generic little strop. Now one of the good points is it actually does have a swivel which is nice and it has a handle which I also like. Now here's the problem with this. See that? This is a two inch drop versus a three inch razor. And now see this? These are the reasons why you do not spend a whole lot of money on that first drop. There's no reason. You probably just going to cut it up anyway like I've done this one. This isn't terrible but it does happen. Now I also put Chromox on the back of this. Don't do that. It's not worth it. Go ahead, you can leave the swaying side and you can go ahead and use it to kind of clean off, dry up your straight razor and then use the smooth side to actually straighten out that edge and get a good shape. So now that is a two inch drop which I'm not going to recommend. I really don't think it's a great idea. Now I've got this three inch drop. Now I don't even know if you can buy these brands anymore. So don't even look at that necessarily. Again, it's got the swivel here which is great and it's got the handle which I also like. And see I've nicked it up a bit. Now this one is a bit larger. All right. And okay. It does have swayed on the back. Look at that. No Chromox. All right. So don't do it. You don't need to. It's not a big deal. Not to start with anyway. All right. And now the three inch drop with the three inch razor. Okay. So as you're looking at this, I want you guys, I want you to see it. Okay. See how that is going to be much easier than trying to do extra one or two inch drop. Now a drop like this, you can buy something that looks almost identical to this. And you can get on Amazon for like 16 bucks. Everything you need to do as a beginner, it would be three inches wide. Perfect. Okay. Now also, Chef's Knife to go have something very similar to this as well. Okay. And it's 20 bucks. But it has been compared to a dovo, all right. And it is smooth leather on the one side and swayed on the other with the same type of design. Okay. As this one, as far as how the handle and the swivel are on it, in 20 bucks at Chef Knife to go. All right. Now what I use is this 30 degree strap, all right. Now you can't actually buy these anymore, but here is what it looks like now on Amazon. And you can check it out, all right. And these are going to be about 65 bucks. Okay. Give it, give it a little bit, but it's got this wonderful clamp and hook. Got a nice swivel. Okay. Beautiful. And it's got these kind of handles, paddle handles, one, a swivel, all right. Which is awesome. Now with this 30 degree strap, you know, you can do perfectly fine with this. You have this beautiful smooth leather side, all right. Now this is two piece, so it's also got a fabric side. Now if I were you to start with at least, you don't have to get really expensive. You can just go with something less expensive, all right. Now this is also got the swayed side. And now that does have chrome locks on it, but I didn't put it there. Okay. That has chrome locks on it because I put it on the fabric side, all right. So now on that fabric side, it will rub off one, the swayed leather side. So I always put the chrome locks on the inside of the fabric because if you don't, it's going to make a mess and it's going to get on everything. So always put it on the inside, all right. And then on the outside, you've got this beautiful fabric, all right. So now what I'm going to suggest is go ahead and buy something you can afford. Just keep it simple, no big deal, all right. Hey, thank you so much. I really hope this is helpful. Now for all of you experienced guys out there and gals, go ahead and in the comments, go ahead and add your suggestions as well. We're trying to keep this simple for the beginner and have a great day. Thank you so much for watching. Really appreciate it all you do. 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