Vintage Barber shaving mugA great flea market find. A silver coated metal barber shaving mug, another good reason to get rid of the beard and celebrate a good straight razor shave.
New York Barbershop Rotterdam:
What a great place to get a straight razor shave or a haircut and for sure to hang around for a bit. Watch the video of a straight razor shave by New York Barbershop Rotterdam.
(image (c) by New York Barbershop Rotterdam)
The Barber Shop Club:
Great place to be in Los Angeles, The Barber Shop Club founded by Woody Lavelle.
Straight Razor – my first strop!
About 2 years ago I bought my first strop to hone/sharpen my straight razors. There are some fancy 100 Euro + models out there and my first thoughts were, you got it for decades so – spent the money. On the other side I wasn´t sure If straight razors would be my thing.
Luckily I went for a relatively cheap one. It´s not that I stoped to straight razor shave, but as a beginner you cut the leather so easily. In most tutorials or movies they strp very fast, which makes absolutely no sense esp. if you are not a “master” in it. Just go about 20 times slowly with hardly any pressure over the leather, thats it.
And at the beginning you are a bit nervous or let me say not so focused. So making a false movement with the blade is done so quickly. So my advice is, save the money and buy a nice one after you ruined the first one.
I guess in about a year, I´m ready to buy something more appropriate for my razors. But in ne meantime, this one serves me well.
Just had a straight razor shave, I hardly use the single bladed Gilettes be-cause
anymore. I love practice on my skill, use the straight razor and probably also the trill of the shave.
I made jokes a while ago when about three bladed razors and how they will go up until 10-20 so you can shave your face with one stroke, we have reached the 5 blade nonsense not too far away anymore.
Watch this barber and see how easy it is!
Straight Razor blades collection – and the beard had to go:
Last week I looked at my dusted razor blades and thought – are you mad at me ? After about 3 month of no use of a razor blade I decided they need more attention. Not to say that just 2 days ago I bought a comb to trim the beard. So after 5 minutes the beard was gone no major cuts, just two and honestly I really did not like my face afterwards. It looked 10 years younger.
Three straight razors are worth to be mentioned:
– Bismarck super “best german hollow ground”, a blade I bought in Bremen for fun around 1994 which I rediscoverd 2 years ago and which started the whole affection for old safety razors and straight razors blades. It is just not too sharp because it´s out of steel, so not my first choice.
– Scharff & Kober I got from someone at the nassrasur community, it was sold as ready to shave, not too sharp but sharper than the Bismarck. Nice engraving on the blade and a more classic look.
– The Tambour 41 by Robert Buntenbach. I got two of them at an antique shop in Ravensburg and they are like new. The engraving “Nachschliff Enslin” means that they have been at a master sharpener, Mr. Enslin to be sharpened or resharpened. They are the sharpest and get sharper after every shave and some treatment on the leather. Since both blades look like brand new I guess they have been sharpened and stocked but never really used. They both come from an old barber shop which closed down due to the age of the barber. The razor blade bag is also from the same source.
(If someone is interested on one of the Tambour´s I would trade it or sell it, make me an offer).
Gillette Adjustable safety razor:
A vintage Gillette Adjustable safety razor. It´s a butterfly system razor. Which means you open the razor for the blade by turning the bottom of the handle and the wings will open for placing the razor blade. The cool thing about this razor is the adjustment ring which is labeled 1 -9 and by turning it you put more pressure on the blade and change the angle of it. So you can change the razor to be more aggressive or being more smooth. Good ones have all the chrome and the numbers are still black.
The razor even got famous 1964 in James Bond´s – Goldfinger, when he shaves in the plane and activates a tracking device.
Very stylish surrounding and absolute efficient master straight razor shave demonstration.
At least once in your lifetime (assuming your are a man) your should have a straight razor shave from a skilled barber. The best deal you will get is in Turkey.
While in the rest of Europe it is quite expensive or out of use, in Turkey it is still very in common practice to get a shave done. So the barbers are very skilled, it is cheap, they have fun when you come in as a tourist, you will learn techniques for your own shaves and you even get a glass of tee (chai) for free as well.
While India is also a very “interesting” option, I can not recommend Thailand. It seems to me that they are not used to our dense hair, so cuts, blood and skin irritation is mostly guaranteed.
be-cause - style, travel, collecting and food blog 