Straight razor training/courses anyone can recommend?

As silly as this may sound, I used to practice shave with a blunt straight edge razor. When I used to have too much growth, I would just turn the razor around and use the spine. After honing (pun intended) my technique, I had a proper shave with a shave ready blade and it was a great experience.
 
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It is - Neil Miller restored my razor, and I use a paddle strop (although its been a while - at least a year, so I'll need to send it back to him again!)

Sadly Neil passed away quite some time ago - maybe 2016 or even before. However, just because you have not used the razor for some time does not necessarily mean a re-hone is necessary. Try stropping it and see how it handles arm hair - if there is no tugging you should be OK to use on your face.

Although I would not disagree with your plan on getting a practical lesson, the only way to become proficient is to practice yourself. My own experience was that I needed to finish with a DE up to about shave 30 at which stage something clicked and the shave quality improved in one jump. After that, I no longer bothered with the DE and accepted a below optimal result - but by about shave 50 the quality of straight and DE were about the same.

I should add that I decided to use a straight daily during the week and just made allowance for the additional time required early on. Also, I'm completely right hand dominant and have never attempted a two handed shave but there's no difficulty in adapting your grip to suit either side of your face.
 
Biggest improvement for me was when I began using a straight razor exclusively and stopped using anything else to touch up the missed bits. It made me concentrate on those missed bits and work out how to deal with them. Took about eight weeks of daily shaves and then it all came together. Since then I haven't shaved with anything else.

So I can only echo others here and say persevere, take it slowly.

Good luck!

Mark
 
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