Results 1 to 10 of 25
Hybrid View
-
11-18-2008, 03:54 PM #1
After finding this post I started to think about this question, which by the way, I find very interesting. For one thing, I know as a fact that metals undergo small change in properties under perturbations. This is undeniably real and can be measured. This is very reminiscent of the Coriolis effect in toilet flushing (really more how they tested the memory of water in the experiments at MIT). Having said that, the seven day period seems to be arbitrary, why not three days? I tend to think, as pointed out earlier in the thread, that there are marketing reasons involved. Seven days seem like a convenient way to do a rotation, and some may find, buying 30 razors or 356 razors, a bit excessive, and contingent to uneven month length, leap years, etc…. ;-) The rotation would probably work the same if you had three razors labeled one, two and three, but it would be harder to remember what razor you used last and what razor you need to use next, as there would not be a direct association between the razors and a real event (in this case the day of the week). For the sake of generality, imagine a barber that has ten clients a day (I do not think that this is a large number for a barber, especially in the old days). If there was any truth to the seven day period in between shaves for a single razor, the barber would need to maintain a total of seventy razors to do his job properly. Notice that the amount of razors would grow if the number of clients increases. Do barbers keep so many razors in their shops? For this reason, I cannot really believe that there is anything special about the seven day period. Can you find any flaws in my analysis?
Al raz.
-
11-18-2008, 04:13 PM #2
- Join Date
- Apr 2008
- Location
- Modena, Italy
- Posts
- 901
Thanked: 271Where 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.
-
11-18-2008, 04:39 PM #3
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
-
11-18-2008, 05:20 PM #4
7 day set
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
-
11-18-2008, 05:55 PM #5
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?
-
11-18-2008, 11:25 PM #6
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.
No matter how many men you kill you can't kill your successor-Emperor Nero