Top 5 Tips for Clippering Short Using the 2-for-1 Blade Cutting Concept

by Ivan Zoot/The Clipper Guy on Monday, October 11, 2010

Ivan Zoot is the director of education and customer engagement for the Andis Company and the founder of Zoot! Hair professional hair care products. Ivan identifies, recruits, trains and manages Andis’ team of professional beauty industry educators. Ivan continues to be a featured presenter at industry shows and events, sharing his unique blend of information, education and enthusiasm for clipper cutting and the entire professional beauty industry. Ivan’s background includes experiences ranging from salon ownership to achieving 3 Guinness World Haircutting records.

I have mentioned that some of us have forgotten a lot about haircutting. It is not that we have forgotten it. It is that we have known it and lived it for so long that we no longer think about it. It is just a fact for us. We use our hands with these ideas ingrained in our heads. We do not need to consciously think about these things. When training a newbie, we might never remember to reference some of these important points.

When cutting short curly hair with a clipper, one of the most important points to remember is that any one blade can deliver two distinctly different cutting lengths.

Here are my top 5 tips related to this 2-for-1 blade cutting concept.

1. Cutting with the grain: Cutting with the grain (growth direction) lays the hair down in the path of the clipper blade. This produces a distinctly longer length than the opposite.

2.Cutting against the grain: Cutting against the grain lifts the hair with the leading edge of the non-moving blade. This lift-and-cut action results in a shorter remaining length on the head.

3. Tipping the blade out / cutting with the corner: The ramped underside of the non-moving clipper blade provides another multiple length cutting opportunity. Levering the blade so only a portion of the toothed cutting edge makes scalp contact is a great blending technique.

4. Cutting with guide combs: Points 1 and 2 above are not limited to the use or detachable blades. The principle holds when cutting with plastic snap-on guide combs.

5. Using this concept to do better, faster fading: The rubber meets the road, or the hair leaves the head, so to speak, when this powerful knowledge is applied to cutting tight faded clipper cuts on textured hair. Cut from the top down with longer blades first. Initially with the grain and then lower down the head with the same blade in a reversed direction. Bingo! Fast and smooth, lineless fading.

Tell us how you use these 2-for-1 length facts to cut hair every day whether you think about it or not.

Happy cutting.