15 Years of Shaving my Head

I am bald. When I was a boy, I looked up to my grandfather, who was also bald. I never considered my hair loss something to be ashamed of or a thing I needed to cover up. My granddad was cool, so it was good for me also.

Comb overs don’t fool anyone. Toupees? I don’t need one. Show the world you are a confident man by showing your bald head.

I didn’t decide to go all the way to a smooth head until about 15 years ago. I started by shaving my head with the razors I was using at the time. I loved the look of a hairless head. However, there were some things I was not happy about.

First, even with a multi-blade razor, I occasionally nicked myself. I also felt I had to shave my head more frequently than I would prefer, generally every day and sometimes twice a day. That’s because, in my opinion, my head stubble didn’t look good. Another problem was I more easily felt winter drafts on my head when it was shaved. Although I’ve since moved from New England to North Carolina, it is still cold enough in winter to notice when cooler breezes strike my head.

I tried razors designed specifically for shaving heads. I tried electric wet/dry razors but only used them as a supplement.

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HeadBlade shaver for bald head shaving.

The best wet shave I got was with my wife’s Gillette Venus mini razor. 

I purchased a professional barber clipper with interchangeable blades and buzz my hair. This will never give as smooth a look as shaving with a razor, but I never nick myself, and I can control the length of my hair so by changing blades. I keep my fuzz slightly longer during the colder months.

There are three major manufacturers of interchangeable blade clippers: Andis, Oster, and Wahl. The blades from any of the companies listed will fit the other brands of clippers. I purchased a corded Andis model. The default blade is a #000, which results in 1/32 inch hair length. This is my winter length. Most of the year, I use a #00000 blade which leaves hair about 1/125 inch in length. 

It isn’t smooth shaved, but it works for me. I typically go 7 to 10 days between running the clipper over my head, up to 2 weeks at most.

When I first began buzzing my head with a barber’s clippers, I stood on a barber’s cape to collect the fallen hair. That worked OK. I could dump the collected clippings into the trash without my wife complaining about hair left on the bathroom floor. 

Search Amazon for barber capes.

My new procedure to minimize a mess in the bathroom is to shave my head in the shower stall before showering. This might be easier if you have a cordless clipper, but my cord reaches from the outlet to the shower.

DO NOT use a corded electric clipper in the shower or tub with water.

Once I’ve buzzed my head, I use a dust pan and whisk broom to get gather up the hair and keep most of the clippings out of the drain. Then I shower, which removes any small bits of hair I missed from the shower stall as well as getting those annoying cut hairs off my body.