what is the reasoning to having a razor for each day of the week or several for the week
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what is the reasoning to having a razor for each day of the week or several for the week
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Well, there are three reasons that I know of,
1. There is a technical argument that says you should let a razor rest between shaves. It something to do with letting the iron molecules settle or something. Incidentally, I have never noticed the difference between rested and non rested blades. My belief is if you don't use them regularly, preferably daily, the edge will start to corrode with rust. The longer you leave them, the more the natural oxidation process has to take the edge off your blade.
2. In times gone buy, the Gentleman would have his razors attended to by his butler. What better than a seven day set for the butler to take care of.
3. Why sell one when you can sell seven.
Take your pick but I think number 3. wins.
Oh, I get to answer a quesiton finally! :D The reason is that razors periodically need honing, and many are not setup or not able to hone their own so they send it out and pay to have it done. Let's say that a razor in continual use would go 2 months between honings (this is for illustrative purposes guys, I've been using mine over two months and starting to feel like it needs to be honed, I'm sure it is dependent on many factors, steel hardness, type of beard, stropping technique).
now, with a 7 day set you are only using a razor every 7th day, so you could go 14 months between honings, theoretically.
I think most practically is a 2 razor set, because there are times I'm travelling and I think that if you were going to be on the road away from home and your usual resources having a backup razor in case something happened to the other would be great.
Red
I never strop. I just buy buy a new razor and sell an old one everyday. It saves me from having to pay a stropmeister
seriously though, I don't know the answer to the question. Maybe everyone who has a razor for every day of the week or several for the week has different reasons.
Hi there! First of all... welcome aboard!
When I started out with this straight razor shaving thing I wondered exactly the same. If we are, in principle, saving the money we won't spend in cartridges and disposable blades... why is it that 7 day sets exist? And do I really need more than one razor?
Well... at the time I made enquires myself as to find out why... I had heard that a blade needed to rest for at least 24 to 48 hours in order to allow the metal to re-shape after a shave. I concluded that it was some sort of a myth, or rather an excuse for us to use in order to fool our wives when the "new" razor arrives: "the others have to rest for some time and I cannot afford to look scruffy at work, dear..." :D Now seriously... this is what I concluded: you will most definitely need 2 razors, no more than that. That's because you'll need a razor that is up to the job every day. The resting thing is a myth. In fact, if you have the means and the skill to touch up your razor from time to time, one razor is all you'll ever need. More than 2 - let's allow this... :) -is collecting. And if you already have 2... you can start up from there. Some members here have way more than 2 razors, I believe... :)
Seven day sets have no real practical reason, in my view. It's a luxury thing - something you buy because you can afford it. Generally speaking, seven day sets are very well crafted sets and have precious details that, quite often, in the past, were bespoke. These were symbols of status and, shaving-wise, have no purpose whatsoever. Some will argue my view and say that there is a very clear practical reason for the 7 day sets namely the possibility of getting a daily shave with exactly the same benchmark and the possibility of spacing the touch ups and the periodical honing to once every 2 or 3 years... at least that's what I heard! :)
I'm sure other more experienced guys will chime in and provide better information than this. But anyway... this is my opinion! Hope it helps!
I like razors, and I have a bad habit of buying them. I set my first limit at seven; since they come in seven day sets and I could use one each day, I was able to make a reasonable argument for seven. Now, I want to expand my rotation, and I'm having trouble picking a number. I could do 10, because that is an even number. I could do 14, because that is two sets of seven. Or I could do as many as I can comfortably store (razor box + razor roll).
I believe the old sets of seven were because they were luxery items, and writing the names of each day on the spines was a nice touch. In all honesty, who would tell a gentleman that he must use a certain razor in a certain day? I used to stick to my rotation of seven, but sometimes I was just in the mood for a different razor.
I used to collect straight razors twenty years ago and didn't shave with them. I had tried and had no luck. They sat in a drawer for years and I would pull them out and admire them once in awhile. I eventually sold all but a few on ebay. Then through a friend I got into DE shaving which eventually led me back to the straights.
Through this forum I learned to hone them and to shave with them and I began to collect them again. I now have around 100 of them. Rather then let them sit in a drawer I rotate through them and enjoy using them. That is my rational for using a different one every day. Welcome to SRP. :)
easy anwser it is called RAD :roflmao
As I understand it, the fine metal jagged business edge of the blade needs an estimated two days to “rest” after being shaved with and the ensuing stropping involved. The molecules can then “relax” to whatever position their atomic “memory” allows. Then when you next strop you can actually “comb” the metal shards into alignment without fighting the memory effect too. Hence, a sharper edge at use time.
Of course, using one blade for one day of the week just makes it easy to not mix up which one you used two days ago. Ego issues not withstanding and certainly valid.
And, if you are only using a blade once every seven days, you’ll go seven times as long between honing or sharpening needs.
I have a rotation of 7 razors because it extends the time between honing but I like some razors better than others. If you have a type of razor you prefer, a 7-day set gives you uniformity because all the razors are the same.
I don't use a different razor every day but I have may shave ready razors to suit my feelings on that particular day - sometimes I just want a change.
As for 7 day sets - I don't see the point now. maybe in the past it was good to have seven due to honing reasons, but as that is something I enjoy, It doesn't apply to me.
I'm not one to believe the theory of resting the edge to be honest. I haven't noticed much difference. I think that it is just a reason for companies to sell more razors!
See 7 days of the week 7 razor set I like that, and I like well rested razors :D wouldn't want them to get tired ya know...
Now it also is the best excuse for RAD too, because every time you get one razor, you have to buy 6 more to keep in multples of 7 RIGHT ????
I now have 77 shave ready razors, OCD mixed with RAD :gaah:
And I just bought one new razor :roflmao:roflmao:roflmao
In the old days a well heeled gentleman wouldn't be caught dead without a seven day set, usually with ivory scales and the very wealth with sterling silver scales. Kind of like owning a Rolex watch now.
the sterling would have to be just for prestige, cause I imagine those handles would make for a hell of a balance problem.
Red
Well aren't all the ornate aspects of razors just for show? So long as the blade shaves well (and you can shave with it), the rest is unimportant.
I like having lots of different kinds of razors because they each give a different shave. Some I like more than others. I'm going to pick the seven best after I'm all finished restoring, and put the rest in a shadow box.
Holli, I disagree, everybody knows, or at least wives should, that different handle materials balance differently depending on atmospheric conditions and because of wood variance sometimes fancy inlays, spacers and pins are needed to compensate. :D
Red
I feel safe to say it in this group, I'm obsessed. I need to try every razor I see. I stay up at night thinking that some razor I saw in SOTD, or in some other post *must* shave better than every razor I have. So far I'm right, every shave has been better than the last. Couldn't be the technique, it's got to be the razor <g>
I'm new to this and I am realizing just how addicting this is. Pretty cool how something i've been doing for 30 years on a daily basis has taken a turn and is now really enjoyable. I'm glad my inquiry sparked a good exchange of dialougeq
joe
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.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alraz
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.