Thread: Nothing against the Barbers

I’ve been reading a lot of arguments lately that refer to barbers. The way the barber did it, the years of developed technique, if it worked for barbers shaving customer after customer etc.- these sorts of arguments.

I had my first barber shave, he used a replaceable blade. He did a good job, but I could tell he had trouble in the same places that give me trouble and the replaceable blade(brand?) was dulling by the second pass. The shave was not perfect.

What I hear in those arguments, whether they are for shaving technique, honing, stropping technique is romanticism. While I am sure there were artist among them, perfectionist, and true masters, by and large they were/are simply tradesman. As such the looked for methods that gave them the most return for their effort. And to do a job that was/is good enough.

As a dedicated hobbyist without regard for time and expense I can do a better job of it; a better shave, a longer lasting edge without reference to what barbers used to do. I don’t use a hanging strop. I use a paddle. I don’t strop at high speed because I see it is not needed. I don’t use a barber hone as I have much better hones-synthetic and natural.

Barber techniques work but they are not the end all be all of sharpen and shave. Imho.
My point... most of us are not barbers. We can improve quality beyond what the average barber provided many years ago.

Possibly or possibly not.

I think that the barber schools taught the methods that were the best and fastest. If there was a better way to do something they would have found it, and used it.

The reason I believe this is because I have been trained in two very seperate "trades" now. What is similar to both of them is that I have learned the fastest ways to get the best results, when using the best tools available to the market.

I'm a professional rough framer and I can cut a straighter line far faster than anyone I know who is not a pro. I can also nail faster, measure faster, and I make less mistakes in doing all of the above.

I'm also a professional dog groomer. From this I know I can use scissors to cut hair faster and shape it more accurately by eye than most amateurs can using clippers and a pattern.

My income is not dependent solely on dong a good job fast. While that might get me the most income in a short time, I only get repeat business if I do a better job than anyone else. Tradesman can't live on volume, they must learn to be better than their peers. This is especially true of those who teach, they must set the standard for their industry.

Finally the tools professionals choose tend to be the best. When your livelihood depends on the quality you can deliver and upon your tools working when you need them you look to the top end of the market. The amateur can get by with something that doesn't stand up to heavy usage but the professional must have a durable long lasting product. As an example I have a sixty dollar hammer. For me as a professional carpenter it made sense, for me as a homeowner and mr. fixit it doesn't. Identifying the tools the professional uses is always a ood way to find out what is the most durable product in the marketplace.

Thats why there is significant value to be found when we look at how and why the professional od yesteryear did things.

Good argument. But you assume a great deal. I was actually thinking of cabinet makers, but framing will make a nice analogy. Your first assumption is that your method of framing is the best. It works, but by comparison to another method, timber framing for instance which is far stronger, and longer lasting when properly protected from weather. Houses are usually built with sheetrock rather than plaster and lath. A good plater job will remove all wobbles and bow from a wall- sheetrock will not. As well the material you use is farmed trees cut as soon as they will yeild a certain width, which you can see easily since nearly every 2x has pith from the center of the tree. Far superior to use mature trees for framing material.

Using a disposable head razor to shave is a closer comparison to the home repair honey-do guy, than straight razor hobbyist. Just like one time I went to trim some cased opening for this guy. He was a hobbyist woodworker. I was going to unload my delta contractor tablesaw but he had a unisaw in the garage.

Saying one thing is better than another is a tough call without specific parameters and standards.

kevint, you mentioned a straight shave you received from a barber. Is there an implied assumption that today's barber will have a generally equivalent level of skill in straight shaving as a barber from a hundred years ago?

Originally Posted by hoglahoo

kevint, you mentioned a straight shave you received from a barber. Is there an implied assumption that today's barber will have a generally equivalent level of skill in straight shaving as a barber from a hundred years ago?

How could the average barber in Averagetown, U.S. today have a skill level rivaling that of the barber 100 years ago when the average barber can probably count the number of shaves he's done in a year on two hands?

I talked with a very young recently trained barber earlier this year when I was in his shop. We talked for a bit about straight razor shaving. He was a very nice guy but was clearly more impressed with showing me how quickly he could flip open his Shavette weapon style (in a manner that I wouldn't even think of doing with a real straight out of respect for the razor) than he was about talking about anything specific with shaving.

Chris L

I think you have to factor in that barbers of the past were far different to barbers of today. Shaving people for them was an every day occurrence, part of a thriving trade.

When my father was a boy he was indentured as an apprentice. Now, apprenticeships exist today, but the years of tradition that existed before the renaissance of apprenticeship (in the UK, at least) cannot be replaced over night. My dad was taught by masters, who themselves were taught by masters. Pay was small so time was taken. Hand-skills were taught whereas now machines are taking over. The things that people had to do are looked at with disbelief by younger generations. My father was in the engineering and then the building trade - the physical exertion that they went through everyday of the week back then would have many squawking about their human rights now. It's a different world.

Apprenticeships and proper teaching, especially in buiding, tailed off while dad was still a young man, then practically disappeared. When they came back with force in the 80s, although I had been working for many years, I enrolled for the 'proper teaching' mainly to get my certificates. When I finished the three year course I had the certificates alright, but I still knew more before I started the course thanks to the training I had received 'on the job' from old hands. Most of the others who passed with me shouldn't have been let loose with a paperclip, let alone a theodolite and a set of plans.

I'm sure romanticism colours peoples memories of bygone days, but the fact remains that shaving with a cut-throat razor was a staple part of barbering for very many years and as is the way with something like that techniques get learned that aren't written down, and the competent tradesman working in a living and widespread trade will either be worth his salt or go by-the-by. I can't see that the same circumstances prevail now - shaving people is not a dog-eat-dog business, not even a staple - it seems to me that it is little more than a not very widespread eccentricity.

Regards,
Neil.

Originally Posted by hoglahoo

kevint, you mentioned a straight shave you received from a barber. Is there an implied assumption that today's barber will have a generally equivalent level of skill in straight shaving as a barber from a hundred years ago?

No implication and no assumption. I was "just sayin'" that I've had one.

It is equally assumptive to believe there existed the same standard of what a shave should be 100 years ago, compared to what our expectations are today as hobbyist.

I generally agree with Kevint. While I'm sure the average barber of days gone by was much better at shaving than today's barbers, I think we give them a little too much credit. I don't know where it’s posted, but many of us read the Mark Twain essay where he writes about the torture of being shaved by a barber...they weren't all great at what they did.

I also tend to believe that there were different standards in the past when it came to the quality of a shave - for the average man. They didn't get a barber shave every day. Maybe once or twice a week? That's a different ballgame, as far as I'm concerned, from shaving a face everyday - the way many must in this era. They were not obsessed with the perfect shave the way we are any more than the poor guy dragging a Mach 3 across his canned-goo covered face today.

If you look at the techniques used by many barbers - even the old/master ones - in videos, etc, they often do things differently from each other and differently from what the teaching manuals say. Stropping technique is an example.

I think many of them found (or adopted the methods taught by their teacher) a way to get the job done well that worked for them and stuck with it. What works well for one tradesman might be tweaked or changed to work well for another. They were also shaving other people, and I think shaving yourself is can be different.

I think barbers certainly have much to teach us, but their teachings and methods vary, and they are not the final answer when it comes to shaving or razors. I wouldn't take what a barber says as gospel. I'd listen to Lynn or other respected honemeister's advice on honing over any barber.

I'm losing my coherence, so I'll stop now.

Jordan

Originally Posted by kevint

No implication and no assumption. I was "just sayin'" that I've had one.

It is equally assumptive to believe there existed the same standard of what a shave should be 100 years ago, compared to what our expectations are today as hobbyist.

I agree, and maybe the comparison would be similar to giving yourself a haircut today and getting a haircut from a barber. Some will be better than others

Originally Posted by hoglahoo

I agree, and maybe the comparison would be similar to giving yourself a haircut today and getting a haircut from a barber. Some will be better than others

I knew you were giving me enough rope to hang myself....

In nearly every class I have ever taken the first thing we do is throw away the required textbook then learn how it's really done