Cutting your own hair - Classic or Dud Man

Yo I cut my own hair and have since college! 20+ years at this point. Good results if you ask me, but I am biased. I would have a hard time trusting anyone else with this job!

Do you use scissors? Or a trimmer?

I used to use primarily scissors but have in the last few years switched largely over to a trimmer.

I also spent a few years washing my hair with only apple cider vinegar rinse (due largely to a thread here, iirc) and once I switched back to shampoo, I regretted it! Should really go back to it.

I also spent a few years washing my hair with only apple cider vinegar rinse

so what's the deal with apple cider vinegar rinse

keep in mind that my hair is currently bleached + dyed + destroyed, so if this is about restoring essential oils, imagine putting essential oils on a pizza that's been in the oven for 45 minutes

Yeah, I dunno, I thought it felt… simpler than using shampoo? And it felt like it was less apt to dry my hair out.

I bought a Liggett's shampoo bar and won't be going back to bottled shampoo anytime soon

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71M4SsojkRL._SL1500_.jpg

I cut my own hair for the first time at age 14. I used scissors only. It's easy to remember because it was a couple of hours before my 8th grade graduation ceremony. Over the next five decades I've been to a barber approximately 15 times total. The money I saved on haircuts really meant something during my deeply impoverished years. ofc, I'm so bald now that I just run some clippers around my remaining fringe and I'm done. Nothing simpler.

My wife helps me with a home haircutting kit. Before that I used scissors, once I shaved my head. My hair curls so most cutting errors aren't all that obvious after a week or so.

scissor cuts and water-only washing for about 20 years now. AMA!

aimless what caused you to go to those barbers over the years? lack of scissors? or peer pressure?

maffew do you ever change it up and do different styles? or do you have a particular way that you do it?

halfway my hair is also curly, and grows quickly, so any fuckup should be quickly grown over

just trimmin. Whichever snip is closest dictates the approximate length. I tried clippers once, recently (I'm using them now on the back of my neck rather than futzing around with a razor), but that just made things too darned tidy... avoiding barber-like precision was the whole point in the first place

mostly my wife

i am in a nice mental zone where i think "if i fuck up badly, that'll be kind of cool"

it helps to not have a job you have to go into, and also to just have no friends

if you fuck it up just do it again and it'll look like you meant to do it that way

My wife's uncle came to his brother-in-law's funeral with a big patch of hair shaved off. Everyone wondered, was it some sort of mourning ritual? No, he said, his wife had just been careless with the clippers.

I think the haircuts I've gotten from an expensive stylist over the past several years were my best ever, but that has ended, and nothing beats the satisfaction of just going over my head in every direction using a haircutting razor with a #3 standoff. I have to shave the scruff off the back of my neck in between cuts, but that was always the case

using a haircutting razor with a #3 standoff

thinking of switching to doing this myself... do you have a recommendation for a razor to use?

mine is a Wahl, I bought it decades ago, not sure about new brands

ok thanks... i have a wahl beard trimmer which has been reliable.

an approximate semblance to my most recent self-cut

https://ratswhiskers.tripod.com/yoricksalute.jpg

http://corkingmovies.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/RikMayall.jpg

I've been cutting my own hair since 1995, which was the last time someone else cut it. Shortly after that I remember walking past a barber's shop and seeing a sign that read 'Cheapest haircut in London - £5' and thinking "piss off, that's 3 pints!". My hair grows unevenly, quite fast, and is reasonably thick, so even when I was paying to get it cut I'd have to trim it myself after a couple of weeks. The key for me is to cut little and often. It's harder to make a mess of it if I'm only cutting off small bits at a time. Also I don't cut my hair when it's wet, because the strands dry back to different lengths so if my hair looks even wet it'll look uneven once it's dry.

I trim bare clippers every week and every few weeks disposable wet razor to the skin