Razor Haircutting Techniques Explained

Razor Cutting Techniques Explained

Video Transcription:

When it comes to haircutting, like anything else, especially when it comes to razor cutting, every instructor has different terminology and different techniques that they use. So, during this course, I'm going to be using a few different techniques that are unique to using a razor.

The first two techniques I want to show you are for when you want to keep the hair as blunt as possible without using scissors…The first one is what I call Blocking. Blocking is when we hold the hair really taunt, bring the razor down just like a little hatchet and then apply force downward and cut it straight off. That's going to be about as blunt as you can make a razor cut. So, we call that Blocking. And again, I would use Blocking primarily when I want to create as much weight as possible and as much of a blunt line as possible, as blunt as you can get with a razor.

So that's one way to make a blunt line. The other way to do it is a technique that I call Gnawing, kind of like gnawing at a piece of fruit, for example. I don't know what other people call it, that's where you hold the hair at the ends. And instead of doing just a blunt straight cut off here, you're actually kind of gnawing at the hair in that instead of cutting it blunt, like I showed you before, I'm going to go with my razor in a very small amount of gnawing action, going up and down, up and down, up and down.

So we can take off the hair blunt as well, but we're taking it off as smaller increments. And the difference between blocking and gnawing is that with the gnawing technique, we get a little bit of a softer edge. So we're still keeping a blunt as blunt as possible with the razor, but a softer blunt edge, if that makes sense to you, okay? All right, so those two techniques I would use when I want to establish a harder, stronger design line, for example, all right? Now, as we start progressing with the haircut, there's a couple other techniques that I'll be using.

One is called Chopping, for the lack of a better term, I call it chopping, where I hold the hair more on the ends and I go with the razor and I'll go in kind of at an angle like this and just chop the hair out as we go, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, okay?

Now, Chopping has a lot of variations onto itself. If you hold your razor at an angle and you chop, you're going to take off length and weight. If you hold your razor more straight up and down, you're taking out more weight, less length. So for example, if I wanted to remove weight and length at the same time, I would chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, if that makes sense.

Now, if I said to myself, well, you know what, that length is pretty good, I don't really want to make it any shorter, I just want to make it softer or more wispy or whatever you want to call it, then I would hold it on the ends and I would take my razor and instead of at the angle, I would go more sort of straight up and down.

And you could do that for a couple of different ways. You can do it to actually take off length, which would create a very soft edge, or you can take it and just take off some weight within the length without making it any shorter. All right, now that may all sound a little confusing.

You'll get the idea as we work through the heads, but basically that's about it when it comes to razor cutting that I want to bring up here. Because again, there's different ways and you'll see different instructors do it different ways. There's a lot of techniques to do this.

My way is not the only way, it's the way that I like and hopefully you'll like it as well, but I just wanted to make sure we're all on the same page when we start these haircuts.