Thread: Did they get this close in the old days?

I love the history associated with shaving with antique and vintage razors. Thinking about who used it before me. What was going on in their lives when they used it.

I've also always wondered about who shaved themselves and who went to a barber?

As for shaving quality, I reckon that some barbers would have really immersed themselves in their craft and pushed the boundaries looking for ways to provide a better shave.

I'd say yes but perhaps not everyone. Some posts have said they didn't have the resources but I think they possibly did. People talked more back then. If someone went about with cuts all over their face a friend or acquaintance would probably have given advice. Then consider all the sellers; no doubt they would have been giving shaving advice to help sell their products.
On another note, I think they were as equally or more committed to excellence then. Look at the handwriting in the declaration of independence (or perhaps the writing of any school boy) and go to a pen forum and ask if they could write as well as us without all our resources.

As many folk have said shaving wasn't a hobby and a lot of people were probably more tolerant of stubble between shaves. These are just my thoughts on the subject but I think due to lots of people living in a small house without distractions like television and radio the skills would have been passed on openly. Most houses in England had a cold dark outhouse so shaving probably would have taken place in the kitchen where hot water could be made available while family members watched.

I would have thought some great tallow soaps would have been available, paired with a new piece of Sheffield steel and some knowledge a great shave would have been fairly common. The little mesters of Sheffield would have been setting bevels all day everyday, they probably could have done it with their eyes closed providing a great razor that only needed regular maintenance to keep in fine form. Natural stones were available and again as people have already mentioned people went round door to door sharpening things for a living. I've even heard of Polypore fungus from Birch trees being used to strop razors in Victorian times, to this day some still call it stropping fungus.

Like today it was probably down to individuals how well or often they shaved but I'm sure they were more than capable if that's what they desired. Great thread, it's something I often think about when using or cleaning up old razors! If only they could tell you a bit about their history...

My mother once told me that her uncle who died 30+ years ago was the best shaven man she had ever known. He is the only man I know who continued to shave with a straight where others switched to DE's. He was born in the late 1800's. I inherited his Heljestrands and loomstrop. He only had 2 razors, one loomstrop and an old barber who did the honing for him.

O.P.: does that answer your question?

My grandfather was a farmer, and my mother remembers a strop hanging in his bedroom, on the wall next to the mirror and dry sink bowl sitting on the bureau. My mother remembers him never looking scraggly, so he probably shaved daily or at least every other day.

I often just make a 1 pass shave on the weekends, and it only takes 5-7 minutes including prep and equipment cleaning/drying (I shave with cold water). I find that shaving daily cuts down on acne quite a bit when I'm working hard enough to sweat many hours of the day, and also makes my shirts last twice as long (since the neck stubble causes the collars to pill up quickly if I don't shave) - so I'm guessing that a lot of farmers shaved daily if they had the time.

I also think a person from the 1800's had skills that most people don't have any more - that would have helped with their shaving ability automatically. For instance, I do a lot of woodworking with hand tools, and find that it takes most people several years to develop the skill and "feel" necessary to use planes and scrapers (thin flexible piece of steel with a burred edge that is rolled over into micro-sized hook) to smooth wood with swirly or splintery grain. However, the understanding of when to raise or lower the angle of the blade (and it's effect on swirly or stronger grain), couple with the approach path - are all the SAME techniques I use when shaving. Razor sharpening is unique due to the very thin fin - but there is still a LOT of things I learned about sharpening a plane, and a scraper that help me learn to sharpen a razor.

And some of the "inexpensive" Arkansas stones that my father purchased in the 1920-30's are finer grit than my 16K Naniwa, so I wouldn't assume that people from the 1800's didn't have the ability to hone their razor themselves.

once in awhile I wonder...hmm..maybe I should leave my straight razors..my next immediate thought "you have the ability to shave with some history involved..skill and all...not just throw it away in the bin like todays plastic disposable razors..Great comment Lynn!

SmallTank

Originally Posted by Lynn

Awesome discussion.

I am really undecided on this one as I believe there were probably some OCD folks around in the good ol' days, no matter how far you go back. What I find interesting is that I can go to one barber shop and have an awesome experience and be left with a minute amount of whisker in the same trouble areas as when I shave and then go to another shop and have a complete BBS shave. Both are great experiences and both shaves are sticky smooth. Some days when I am shaving, I experience the same thing myself. Some days I only shave with the grain and although I look presentable (always a matter of opinion.....lol), I can obviously feel a little whisker across or against the grain. I think that since we started the first forum, we have seen a lot more compulsiveness regarding the sport and I think that some of the soaps that make big cushion and suds might be better today, but I really don't know. We do have a lot more visibility than in the old days and the capability for information and experience to be shared on a global basis. This is a really good thing, but we also have those who would proclaim products, individuals and even source information as the best or greatest which sometimes offsets people developing and learning from their own experiences.

We do know that there were good razors in the old days as many still exist. But, even in history, there were people who used stones, belts and grinders to sharpen razors so I'm sure the variability there was as big as it is today. I would just love to go back into history and talk to barbers and guys from a couple hundred years ago to see what their shaving experiences were like. Sometimes when you shave with a 100 year old razor or one that is older, you can't help wonder about it's shaving history.

I for one, think that we are making our own history by preserving this art and ensuring that the next generations have the opportunity to enjoy the pleasure of shaving that we enjoy from the straight razors or DE's and all the wetshaving tools.

I'm really kind of on the fence about this. I know, for example that hygiene standards 100 years or so ago were markedly looser than they are today. That said, I can't imagine standards for shaving were very stringent at all back in those days, 1 or 2 shaves a week was probably it for most common fellas. Sure there were probably those who either had time or necessity to shave more frequently but I'm sure that in general if you didn't shave that often or didn't shave at all, no one really cared too much.

By contrast I have a story that my Mother often told me about her grandfather. One Christmas, she was quite keen to buy him one of those "new fangled" Gillette safety razors. In her head she thought it would save him a lot of time and trouble honing and stropping. So she set about dropping hints to see what he thought of safety razors. His response was direct and to the point (was there any other kind of response from a German immigrant farmer?) "I don't think much of those safety razors, it's the end of men being men when they're not even expected to keep their razors sharp." So from this perspective, perhaps even despite some generally loose hygiene rules there were men who saw the proper maintenance and employment of a straight razor a right of passage, one of the things that made a man...well a man. At least that's how my great-grandfather Charlie Richter seems to have felt about it.

What may be an accurate picture of the way men in the 1800 and early 1900's related to shaving would be the documented history of what the US and British military required. I'm sure that these,if any, records of the hygiene practices of time would still exist. Based on these requirements I think we could estimate what the rest of the population did.

Originally Posted by Kees

My mother once told me that her uncle who died 30+ years ago was the best shaven man she had ever known. He is the only man I know who continued to shave with a straight where others switched to DE's. He was born in the late 1800's. I inherited his Heljestrands and loomstrop. He only had 2 razors, one loomstrop and an old barber who did the honing for him.

O.P.: does that answer your question?

Originally Posted by JohnG10

My grandfather was a farmer, and my mother remembers a strop hanging in his bedroom, on the wall next to the mirror and dry sink bowl sitting on the bureau. My mother remembers him never looking scraggly, so he probably shaved daily or at least every other day.

I often just make a 1 pass shave on the weekends, and it only takes 5-7 minutes including prep and equipment cleaning/drying (I shave with cold water). I find that shaving daily cuts down on acne quite a bit when I'm working hard enough to sweat many hours of the day, and also makes my shirts last twice as long (since the neck stubble causes the collars to pill up quickly if I don't shave) - so I'm guessing that a lot of farmers shaved daily if they had the time.

I also think a person from the 1800's had skills that most people don't have any more - that would have helped with their shaving ability automatically. For instance, I do a lot of woodworking with hand tools, and find that it takes most people several years to develop the skill and "feel" necessary to use planes and scrapers (thin flexible piece of steel with a burred edge that is rolled over into micro-sized hook) to smooth wood with swirly or splintery grain. However, the understanding of when to raise or lower the angle of the blade (and it's effect on swirly or stronger grain), couple with the approach path - are all the SAME techniques I use when shaving. Razor sharpening is unique due to the very thin fin - but there is still a LOT of things I learned about sharpening a plane, and a scraper that help me learn to sharpen a razor.

And some of the "inexpensive" Arkansas stones that my father purchased in the 1920-30's are finer grit than my 16K Naniwa, so I wouldn't assume that people from the 1800's didn't have the ability to hone their razor themselves.

That was some really interesting answers. Thanks for sharing.

Originally Posted by whavens

"Sometimes when you shave with a 100 year old razor or one that is older, you can't help wonder about it's shaving history." Lynn I couldn't agree more. I have a W & B with the VR stamp and every time I use it I wonder about the number of faces it has seen in its journey. Part of the reason I love using straights.

Just bought a vintage custom Erik Anton Berg off ebay with the name Axel Augustson on it and that has launched me on a quest to find out who this man was and what he did. A bit of research finds he immigrated from sweden with the razor being a farewell gift from his family at age 22 on a boat to new york. moved to salt lake where he mingled mostly with other swedes and eventually on to san francisco where he worked in the mining industry as a drill foreman, writing short plays on the side. Puts the razor in the late 1800s somewhere right in the middle of the mass immigration and building of this country.