conversation with a barber

[daverojo77]

So I paid a visit to an old barber across the street from my house just to see what he had because when I used to get my haircut there years ago I was still using DEs. One thing lead to another and he show me all of his shaving stuff. I got to see a really nice Wade and Butcher, several Cotis he called soap stones. When I asked him why he called them that he said because they lathered them up before honing with them he had no idea what a belgium Coticle was.
He showed me how he honed them and how they butter knived them when they had chips in them to take the chips out with another type of hone I forget what he called them and then to the soap stone. Once thing he said was that every razor he got he immediately put a barber's notch in it for better overall handling.

So we begin the topic on why straight shaving isn't part of the barber show anymore and how he got a letter from Trenton stating in NJ there will be no more use of actual straight razor. That's when he pulled out a shavette and proceeded to rage on it saying it was an embarrassment to the art of straight shaving.
One thing he was strongly expressing is how when AIDs became a pandemic he was glad he wasn't shaving customers with straights anymore due when someone had bloody weepers barbers would rub the blood off with their thumbs while shaving. If that barber happen to have an open cut on this said thumb then he would het AIDs.
He said that's the reason barbers don't shave with straight razors anymore.

At this point I realized he was off his rocker because if that were the case shavettes would't be used in barber shops today.

either way I was intrigued by his thoughts on straight shaving having experienced and shaved many patrons in the past.

What got me thinking is "our thing" here where members here have developed ways to hone razors and the knowledge being passed though here is something not necessarily something we inherited from guys like this but stuff people kind of figured out on their own. Would you agree? Taping razors for example wasn't even heard of for these guys but some of us do it and you know what it works.
It's been a journey because it is in fact a lost art and somewhere, maybe here there's a sort of Renaissance happening.

Either way it was a fun talk and I thought I would share it here while giving kudos for the members here for keeping the art alive.

Overall I can't help to thing our best practices today are better than what these barbers years ago when they wear shaving people. Based on the fact that he said people got weepers I thought to myself I haven't gotten a weeper in quite some time so maybe I'm doing something right? or maybe I'm not shaving close enough, i don't know!

***Not sure if I posted this in the right thread so please move if necessary