Thread: 7 day rotation - a novice's question

Hello to all,

I was wondering, why is it so popular to have a 7 day rotation with razors? I figure it may be due to having one honing / maintenance session per week, or perhaps just because one can (collectors wanting to use their razors)?

I believe a pair of srt8s should be a minimum rotation for anyone, but some ( myself included ) with RAD just need to justify our purchases and a 7 day set covers just some at a time let alone several 7 day sets of different types etc
& then there is the extreme few here who would have an annual set of 364 & the super specials for the leap year days LOL

I doubt that they are very popular in the sense that everyone has a set but no doubt most would not mind having a set. I don't have this kind of spare change Thiers-Issard "Bijou De France" 7 day Straight Razor Set hanging around to save on honing. Would be nice though to be in that position.

Bob

Nice link... beautiful razors... If only I had $3k to drop on shaving.

Well, if not you'd better find a second job. Oops, I forgot that this hobby was supposed to save me lots of money.

Originally Posted by ace

Well, if not you'd better find a second job. Oops, I forgot that this hobby was supposed to save me lots of money.

It will. It may take up to 450 years, though, but it will!

One is all you truly need. However, if you need to send it out for sharpening then a second would be nice. For me, I found myself browsing every antique store I could find in my surrounding area and picked up quite a few that I thought I could restore and start using. It took several months before I got the hang of cleaning them up and sharpening them but by then I found I had a few in rotation. At that point I found a leather pouch designed to hold 7, so I started trying to decided what my 7-day rotation would look like. Like you, I thought that would give me one for each day of the week then I could re-sharpen them. I found that they do not need re-sharpening after just one shave, so the 7 day rotation gives me enough 'sharp' blades for more like a month. At this point I don't need to fully resharpen, but touching them to my barber's hone works great.

By the way, over the last month, I have started using just one razor. Don't know why exactly but I find myself working more on my stropping and it seems to be working. So, I kinda stopped the rotation for now.

Happy Shaves,
Scott

I don't understand why one would stop at 7. Seems arbitrary to me?

I imagine back in the day you could take the set with you for a trip out of town without having to bring your strop.
Personally, I am approaching a 1 month set in honed condition, and I have enough in possession to complete a 52 week set.
Why? Because I can.

Or if your butler leaves town and one of the lesser servants has to shave you. Then when the butler comes back he can do the stropping.

Michael