Thread: Blade angle & the scything motion

I have read more then once to use a scything motion when shaving. I have an image in my mind of the grim reaper with his scythe and what a scything motion is but I haven't actually swung a scythe lately. To be honest I haven't swung one at all and I don't recall seeing anyone else using one. So I have been playing at what exactly a scything motion is and applying it to my shave.

Not long ago I posted a thread asking if others , like me, had experienced a difference in the toughness of the whiskers on the left compared to the right side of the face. I seem to have tougher whiskers on the right then on the left or it could be blade angle. I have experimented with blade angle and had more or less come up with what I think works best for me.

With this mornings shave I tried something a bit different. I was thinking of the coupe de maitre that is performed under the nose to get at the whiskers on the upper lip. Here we approach the skin at nearly a 90 degree angle and as we sweep downward we decrease the angle to almost zero. It occurred to me that this is a scything motion. I had noticed that once I found what I thought to be the correct angle I would maintain that angle throughout the stroke.

This morning I tried starting at the normal angle and approximating the coupe de maitre I began decreasing it as I went through the stroke. Again what I guess is a scything motion. I found that this seems to be a more effective stroke then I was getting maintaining the same angle throughout the stroke.

This is on one shave and I intend to keep experimenting with it. I figured I would post it to turn others on to it if you would like to try it and to find out if others have been doing this all along. Any thoughts would be welcome.

i ended up using dictionary for this one Jimmy.Thank you for more confusion.


i didn't know they have special name for it but i have use it without known it.I have use only when i go against the grain.It is easier use this first then go 90 degree on your first against the grain,(now i am confusing heheh)
Scything or slicing

Interesting, Jimmy. That might work better than the "scything motion" I've always envisioned and abandoned after I did it wrong (with a Feather AC) about three months ago and still have a 1/2"x1/8" by a bit less than 1/64" deep scar on my cheek. I've often tilted my razor heel down on passes. With that nasty cut, I tilted heel down and rather than drawing straight down in the pass I made an angled pass. My error was in the fact that I had too high of a blade angle and effectively sliced a section of my cheek off.

I'm satisfied enough with a slight tilt of the heel now that I don't know if I'll try your method. Maybe I will though.

Chris L

Originally Posted by Chris L

I'm satisfied enough with a slight tilt of the heel now that I don't know if I'll try your method. Maybe I will though.
Chris L

At your own risk, no warranties expressed or implied. In case I wasn't explaining myself clearly before...... I don't start out with a close to 90 degree angle the way we do under the nose because we have to. I start out with a regular approximately 30 degree and decrease to maybe 10 as I do a light pressure smooth pass. The scything is not from heel to toe but rather from edge to spine if you get what I mean.

Jimmy,

While I haven't used the scything shaving stroke, I have used a scythe, or tried to use one, when I was a kid and again when clearing some ground for my rowing club. It's hard work and to do it right takes practice and a sharp scythe (sound familiar?)

My interpretation of the stroke is different from yours in that I believe one rotates the blade around a pivot point (hinge pin perhaps) in approximately the same plane as the blade of the razor. This would be something like a stroke with a scythe, for a right hander, where you hold the snath in your hands and swing your shoulders from right to left, keeping the blade parallel to the ground and making a semi-circular arc with the blade.

I now whack weeds with a Stihl, does this mean there's a Braun in my whiskers' future?

... guess not

Growing up on a farm, I had the "privilege" of spending many hundreds of hours using a scythe, both the small one handed version and the two handed monsters depicted with the grim reaper. The scythe works so much better than a machete because of the angle at which the blade approaches and hits the grass. Though Bruce is correct that the actual motion of the real scythe is pivotal because of the way you're swinging it, I don't believe that is the approach for shaving.
Think of it exactly in the manner in which you slice a tomato or bread. You don't just push the blade straight down, instead as you push the blade down you are also moving the path of the blade in same manner as a single stroke of a saw. That way the edge of the blade is slicing through the object in two vectors at once. The beginning and ending positions of a straight cut could be depicted by a rectangle while the beginning and ending positions of a scythe cut would be depicted by a parallelogram.

Clear as mud?

My understanding of the scything motion is as follows.

The key point to the use of a scythe is not the fact that it is being swung about in an arc, but that the blade hits its target with a sideways component to its motion instead of head-on. This I know from my days working on a farm.

In shaving this can be achieved in two ways:

1. Use the "Gillette Slide" as described in vintage shaving literature that came with some Gillette razors. Think of shaving an idealized cheek -- a flat vertical plane. The most straightforward way to shave is to hold the blade edge parallel to the floor and move it in a vertical direction. This is NOT the Gillette slide. The Gillette slide says to hold the razor just as before but to move it slightly sideways as you pull downward. Too much of this or too much pressure against the cheek and as the movie says "There Will Be Blood".
2. The second way to achieve this is to hold the blade edge slightly askew from horizontal and shave in the usual vertical direction. In DE shaving this can be assisted by a special razor type called a "slant".

Both of those techniques should be avoided by a raw beginner as they can be dangerous. I have no trouble with either of those using a safety razor but don't yet dare to try with a straight.

P.S. Gillette did not call it the "Gillette Slide". I don't think they named it at all. They just considered it the correct way to shave. I believe "Mantic", famed for many shaving videos, gave it that name.

P.P.S. A real scythe can be dangerous too!

Originally Posted by Utopian

Growing up on a farm, I had the "privilege" of spending many hundreds of hours using a scythe, both the small one handed version and the two handed monsters depicted with the grim reaper. The scythe works so much better than a machete because of the angle at which the blade approaches and hits the grass. Though Bruce is correct that the actual motion of the real scythe is pivotal because of the way you're swinging it, I don't believe that is the approach for shaving.
Think of it exactly in the manner in which you slice a tomato or bread. You don't just push the blade straight down, instead as you push the blade down you are also moving the path of the blade in same manner as a single stroke of a saw. That way the edge of the blade is slicing through the object in two vectors at once. The beginning and ending positions of a straight cut could be depicted by a rectangle while the beginning and ending positions of a scythe cut would be depicted by a parallelogram.

Clear as mud?

+1. Scything is adding a unidirectional slicing motion to a chopping action.

The thing Jimmy describes, sounds like what AusTexShaver calls the scooping stroke: it variates the cutting angle during the stroke, and is very effective when used in short strokes ATG, in peculiar on very stubborn spots with swirling hair growth.
I was meaning to make an addition about it to the "advanced shaving techniques" Wiki article, but haven't got to it yet.

Now we're getting somewhere. We've got the following strokes: straight, skew, slice, scythe, and scoop. S'more anyone?

There are good graphics in the Barbers Manual. The blade is held with the edge facing downward as if to make a perpendicular stroke but the entire blade moves at a 45 degree angle instead of moving downward. This stroke is like "leading with the tip". I think of it like slicing bread, only I'm slicing whiskers instead. The problem, of course, arising when you add too much slicing motion. The razor doesn't know the difference between your ugly whisker and your pretty face.

A scooping stroke is used under the nose. I also use it just above the chin. Well, in any little crevice.

I'll mention, one more time as well. Never scythe on a protrusion (like the chin). The divot in my chin will attest to that!