Use your Wrist

The other day I popped in on a barber who's just opened up in the city. He's classically trained with over 20 years experience and from Sicily originally.

Anyway, we got to talking about this and that. After a while he divulged what he considered one of the most important aspects of shaving a customer, which I thought was equally useful if shaving yourself.

Use your wrist, not your arm. Well, you can use your arm too, but mainly your wrist. Much, much better control from the wrist than say the elbow or shoulder if you think about it. Plus it puts a natural limit on the length of stroke. Within that length of stroke, your arm is stationary - much less chance of making a jerky movement that ends in a cut or nick. Avoiding that is paramount for professional barbers, but also important for us too.

As it turns out I've been using a fair bit of wrist, but never in a conscious way - it's just something that developed over time. The past few days I've been really concentrating on wrist rather than arm action - it does make a difference.

This is probably something that's a no-brainer to a lot of people, but I don't recall it ever being overtly mentioned, at least in recent history. Apologies if I'm telling you all how to suck eggs.

So gentlemen (and ladies) - crack out the floppy wrists and see if it doesn't help improve your shaves. :D

James.

I seem to move my arm a bit on my cheeks,where I do longer strokes, but mostly just my wrist everywhere else. I'll have to try this, and report back.

Thanks for the post!!!
Makes a lot of sense that you should use the small muscles in the wrist that you have more control over.

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Originally Posted by Rosco

I seem to move my arm a bit on my cheeks,where I do longer strokes, but mostly just my wrist everywhere else. I'll have to try this, and report back.

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Now that I think about it, I do the same as well. I definitely use my wrist around the chin and upper lip areas.

Funny I've tried to keep my wrist out of my stroke, as I found I was "sweeping" the razor in an arc. Hair near the point was not being cut in the same direction as the hair nearer my hand so more tugging resulted. keeping my wrist still has smoothed my stroke.

Thanks jimbo...i always found myself using the wrist as well, specially when using 5/8ths wich is normally my choice, but when going 7/8ths or higer i see myself doing a movement with the whole arm...dont know why i guess i do this without thinking over...just comes naturally.

if you see this youtube videos that are shot in barbershops over in istambul,turky etc...the barbers tense their hands also locking their elbows and do sharp movements just with their wrists...

Now that you mention it James, I guess I use my wrist too, but only for certain parts of my face. E.g. for the sides I tend to use arm movement, straight down or straight up. But then for the neck, chin and upper lip it's definitely wrist. Thinking about it, I think I use short wrist movements for the tricky/delicate areas, arm movement for the flatter areas.

I use my wrist for shaving as I use a real obvious scything motion. I find it cuts the hair effortlessly compared to just straight up and down with the arm.

When using your wrist as Jim says, the length of stroke is more natural and consistent.

Yep, .....whenever I have cut myself (in the past only! - of course), it was always that lunge with the arm! :(

It makes sense, smaller movements with the smaller musceles.

My errors occur when my mind wanders and I am not focusing on where the edge is and what I'm doing.

Ironically, I will, potentially, cut myself more when I'm demonstrating (signing up customers) a str8 razor shave. - talking while shaving! :thinking:

Steve

Don't get me wrong, I think there's a place for arm movement too. The barber I spoke to let me sit and watch him shave a customer (with a disposable straight - not allowed to use the real thing here). There was arm movement in there, but it was minimal compared to his wrist movement. He was quick with it too - two passes in about 5 minutes, with no nicks and no burn that I could see. Customer seemed happy in any event.

Kind of related - I gave him a Wapi as a gift. He was really pleased, but said that in Italy it's bad luck to receive a gift that is sharp (maybe that's a Sicilian thing....:eek: ) so he's going to give me a couple of free shaves as payment. I'm going to be eyeballing his technique first-hand, plus I'll be able to feel what he's doing too, pressure wise. I'll keep you informed.

James.

Not sharp?, well that explains a lot of the razors I've bought then . . .

That sounds like a great opportunity.

Sounds great James. Look forward to the update.

James,

I think it would be really neat if you picked his brain on stropping too. I'd love to hear everything he has to say on the topic. I've been collecting comments on stropping from real barbers for about 3 years now and I've received some very enlightening comments.

Feel free to PM me as you may discover some wild perspectives.

No worries guys - as I find out you'll find out. :tu

Alan, I will ask him about stropping. We did talk briefly about it and he showed me (on the Wapi I gave him) how he strops on the palm of his hand mid-shave - he flipped on the edge :eek: and looked very heavy handed, but when I tested the sharpness of the Wapi again he hadn't damaged the edge at all! It will be interesting to hear what he has to say, but I'm fairly reticent (after the hand stropping demonstration) to take one of my strops in there for him to use....

James.

That is on par with comments from other barbers. But when you shave with the razor they shave great.