Thread: why do people use razor for each day of week

Originally Posted by Alraz

If there was any truth to the seven day period in between shaves for a single razor...

Where did you get that from? I think you have confused the recommendation of some razor manufacturers (e.g., Thiers-Issard) that a razor rest for at least 24 hours between shaves with the fact that rotating through 7 razors is a way to extend the time between honings. In the old days, a barber would have shaved all ten customers with one razor and honed it about every 2 weeks.

I think Chimensch has it, I think that sets are made for the guys that don't hone their own. barbers wouldn't have this problem.

Red

I have a friend who is a very old retired barber. His father and grand father were barbers before him. He told me that he always had a 7 day set of razors. The reason was that they were all the same and he knew how they shaved. The razor was an extension of his hand so to speek. If one needed to be honed he would just grab the next. He said he would use the same one every day until it needed extra attention. This save him alot of time, until he could go home and hone the three or four razors that required to be sharpened. His father did mostly shaves, One saturday he did over three dozen shaves using only two razors. Dice Stone

I am sure that my confusion is more obvious than just that ;-). The number I am using comes from a 7 day rotation for razors, which I believe was the original question: “why do people use razor for each day of week?” My point is that this number is completely arbitrary. Using your numbers there are a few things that stand out:

1) The barber does not follow the manufacturer suggestions (or buys from one that those give such guidelines ;-)).

2) One gets, approximately, 140 shaves in between honing a razor. This is the bottom line.

It takes the barber of my example 2 weeks to go through that. It would take a single user shaving once a day approximately 4.6 months. Or if he uses 7 razors, it would take the single user approximately almost 3 years to reach the “honing point”, or 14 months if he uses only 3 razors. However, at the end of that period, he would have to hone All his razors (one if uses one, three if he uses three or seven if he uses seven), which is the approximately the same amount of honing*, isn’t it? One can use 20 razors and hone every 8.7 years…

What am I missing here? There has to be something wrong with my logic.

Al raz.


* this is not really true because there is more wear when you use a single item that if you use seven but would the difference be so great?

Your applying 21st century logic to an old and quaint custom. Also your thinking too much about this. A seven day set was just a prestige thing. Nothing more and nothing less. Also most barbers just had a few razors and used one , put it in the sterilizing liquid and grabbed one out to do the next customer and just did that until a razor needed honing. Maybe a few strokes on a barbers hone before the shave was all he would do or between customers. before the next day he would attend to actual honing if it was required.