Thread: Straight razor mentality

I carry a swiss mechanical pocket watch and a bone handled pocket knife, I prefer to use my steel bodied Minolta 35mm SLR camera than my digital camera and I use a canvas tent when camping with my kids becasue it works better than the 'nylon' ones we have owned in the past.

So how much of this is the feeling of quality / of substance and how much the pleasure of use of a good quality item ? All of it, I like to use and own Quality.

many of my clients who come to me for knives and jewellery do so because I forge and hand make each and every item myself, they get that little extra something out of knowing that the piece of Jewellery or Knife they have bought has been lovingly handcrafted with patience and care.

So In this fast 'I want it now and cheap' world we live in nowadays, I know there are still many people in the world who have the 'straight razor mentality'

The way I see it we live in a disposable world where everything is easily disposed of, including people and their relationships. Hype is king. There is no appreciation for quality, people are in too much of a hurry. Blame that on our society and the direction its heading. If things continue the way it is we'll be like the Roman Empire in its waining days. There are many parallels already.

Originally Posted by floridaboy

Microwave meals, you can feed the family something in seconds, but what's in it?

There are three things I use our microwave for..Popcorn, Popcorn, and Popcorn

I love collecting antiques. There is nothing better than camping in a tent, not an rv being in the outdoors and being a part of it.

Wayne I'm with you on the quality thing. My mom makes quilts and by piecing them by hand she says it gives them a soul. I think hand made things have a little af the soul of the man who made them. This is why I like the blued rifle in the wood stock. There are few things more nobel for a tree to do than honorably take game. Same with a fine long bow shooting a ceder shaft. Touch a piece of iron forged by smith you can feel the sprit of the man that put the sweat into the iron. A lot of people look at an old mechinacal device as junk I see a genius of a man before digital and CNC machines. Fit and finish worth putting your name on.

Originally Posted by floridaboy

how many of you TIE a tie, instead of a clip on?

In defense of my peers, most of them do seem to know how to tie a tie... It just takes us a few shots to get the length right

Originally Posted by wvbias

Necktie? I've never owned one. I suppose
you could call this a family tradition.

huh???
Oh, wait... West Virginia, eh?

My Dad's family all lives in Tennessee, I can relate.
Almost.

And as for the topic of the thread:
To remember is to honor, to forget is to dishonor.

Although many are, I have noticed not everyone here who shaves with a straight is historically oriented. As for me? I have never used a fountain pen, although I am seriously tempted to give it a try. I do own a pocket watch and used it consistently for years, albeit a cheap quartz model that was retired after the battery died and I acquired a cell phone. I camp. I would rather code my own web site by hand instead of using FrontPage. I enjoy smoking a pipe on occasion. I prefer scotch that has been carefully and skillfully aged with a rich flavor, scent, and color over inexpensive, super-distilled and filtered flavorless, colorless vodka. Although the whole broke college student thing does force some compromises. Which, it so happens, is also why I have yet to buy a badger brush.
And I would never be able to survive in a world without spellchecker.

So at the moment, I’m somewhere in the middle. I have a deep respect for the old way of doing things, but I do have a pragmatic side as well. Understandable, I am sure; after all, everyone here has learned how to use a computer. Give me a few years and some expendable income; I’m sure I will have plenty of things that did not come off an assembly line.


There my midnight ramble for the day, hope it makes sense.
-Michael

Funny that this topic should come up. I like to think of myself as a modern individual but older ways just appeal to me more and straight razor shaving just fit right in with them. Everyday I visit my mom she comments that I remind her more and more of my grandfather, a man I never met. When I announced to her that I straight shaved she was thoroughly convinced that I am the exact image of her dad. She used to watch her dad shave when she was a little girl and he used a straight while new fangled razors were already taking shape. She found a black and white of him and we even look identical. Now I can even tell her about some of the things he did and why he did them because I do them to. Weird.

Smoking pipes, straight razors, barbershop antiques, cast iron cooking (including 3 legged dutch ovens), fountain pens, fedoras, camping in a period correct canvas wall tent complete with wood burning camp stove, muzzle loading firearms, pocket watches, ice cream made in a hand turned churn, home brewed beer...I could go on and on. All are interests/passions of mine, and I grew up in Southern California, Los Angeles County. How'd that happen???


Scott

I am always touched to here people talk about quality and the deep intrinsic value of taking the time to do things right and what I mean by right is with the spirit of love and caring. I rarely run across such people in this day and age.
I do not like computers. For me they stand for just about everything I dislike about the modern world, and yet, isn't it odd that I should find such a group of people as you, kindred spirits actually, on such a device?!

Mark Avery

I agree - I like things that are made with care and craftsmanship, and that were built so well that they last.

Almost every day I shave with an antique straight (sometimes I use one of my new ones), write with a fountain pen, use an old leather sachel. My pride and joy is an older (60 years - almost antique by Australian standards ) automatic Omega Seamaster wristwatch which I wear every day. Keeps perfect time and never needs a battery. Just pure quality.

James.

In the old days (and by that I mean early industrial revoloution and before), the things that were made were generally necessities. As the ability to mass produce grew, it was quickly discovered that production could easily outpace need. The stratigy of the industrialist changed from filling a need to creating one.

King Gillette did not set out to change the way people shaved. His goal was to create a product that he could sell a lot of. He was a salesman for the Crown Bottle Cap Co. (those are the guys that made the first bottle caps, just like the ones you still see today on the top of your beer bottle). The companys owner pointed out to him why the enterprise was so successful. The caps could be used only once, and then they would be discarded, unlike the bottles, which (as many of us old guys will remember) could be returned and refilled. The caps would always be in demand simply because they couldn't be reused.

Gillette sat down every night and thought hard about what he could invent and manufacture that would be disposable. Well, he settled on the razor, and the rest is history, as they say. After a lot of great salesmanship (everyone probably already knows this, but for those who don't, Gillette actually gave away the razors so that people would try them, hoping that they would like them and have to buy replacement blades eventually), everyone started using them, even though they weren't such an improvment over the straight. The appeal was probably the novelty of the device at first, and then the cost was surely a factor for boys growing up and just starting to shave.

But the initial money savings, disappeared over the years, and before anyone knew it, they were stuck with it. My Father was born in '35, and he never used a str8, and he never saw his father use one either. The skills that would have been passed from one generation to the next were lost. What once was a tool that had been in every household 75 years ago is now just a relic, even though it is a better tool than any of it's current replacements.

But the change is not just in how we shave, it's in how we view the world. Something that was once a valued posession has been replaced by something that will be thrown away. The jobs we used to have as crafstmen and artisans are replaced with assembly line jobs manufacturing more disposable items, manufacturing garbage. The men who toil on these assembly line jobs became disposable. No longer are they tradesmen who an employer values for his skill, his loyalty, and as a fellow man, but they are little more than the soft parts of the machines that they tend, easily replaced and quickly forgotten. Is it any surprise, in light of this, how the governments of the industrialized world sent, literaly, millions of young men to their certain death in the battlefields of Europe during the First World War?

By not valuing an object, we discount the work that went into it. To discount the work, we trivialize the worker. to trivialize the worker, we devalue human life.

Support what lasts, value human life.