Thread: Why do Barbers only do one pass when we do 2 - 3?

Can anyone tell me why a Barber will do one pass of a straight razor and we are doing 2 to 3 passes?

Sam,

I am no expert but last (and only) time I got a SR shave from a razor he only did one pass. He also gave me one of the worst shaves of my life, including my own first SR shave. This was in the afternoon, I shaved again that evening tomtidy it up and had a good pass and a half to clean it up. I doubt this is everyone's experience but one pass from this bloke was not enough.

Stu

I would say that barber is a 'lazy so and so'

Mine does a two pass shave with Proraso pre shave treatment, awesome omega boar lather, hot towel and bay rum! Frank is legendary in this town though.
Find another Barber

Gentlemen:

From what I have observed, within that single pass the barber shaves in different directions rather than the standard north to south on the first pass.

Regards,

Obie

There's also the little issue that the barber is getting paid for "job lot" and not by the hour, so if he can get more shaves done he makes more money. Of course that's assuming the quality is still acceptable. If it's not then he's just not that good a barber.
Another point worth considering: we shave at most once a day, usually. The barber could be doing a dozen or more a day (or none, but you get the idea) so it's reasonable to expect they have somewhat better skills. I know that's not always the reality, but it's not an unreasonable expectation if they do shaves regularly.

Back when I had a barber that did straight shaves, he would do only one multi-directional pass. Not because he was lazy or trying to shave as many people as he could. He was just that good and experienced with the straight. Never left with anything worse than a BBS shave.