{"id":2964,"date":"2009-11-18T04:21:24","date_gmt":"2009-11-18T12:21:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=2964"},"modified":"2009-11-22T06:02:21","modified_gmt":"2009-11-22T14:02:21","slug":"ill-be-broken-down-before-theyre-broken-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=2964","title":{"rendered":"I'll Be Broken-Down before They're Broken-In"},"content":{"rendered":"

Quite a few years ago, at the suggestion of a barber, I switched to getting buzz-cut hair-cuts. Some years after that, I spotted an Oster<\/a> Teq clipper at Target<\/a>, for something less than the price of three hair-cuts. I've been cutting my own hair ever since.<\/p>

Results have usually been satisfactory, with one exception where a guide-comb fell-off the clipper as I was using it, and I was compelled to buzz down to stubble<\/a> to achieve uniformity.<\/p>

In early August, that clipper started making a dreadful noise. I've looked at the mechanism (one of a basic magnetic motor), but don't see anything plainly amiss. I might be able to have the clipper professionally repaired, but I'd expect the cost, including shipping, to be about that of just buying new clippers of the same sort. So I planned to go back to Target<\/a> and buy another pair. Before I did so, the Woman of Interest<\/a> suggested that I price clippers on-line.<\/p>

In the Amazon<\/a> Marketplace, I found an offer for the Oster Turbo 111 clipper<\/a>, one of a sort that would be used by a professional barber, at a really great price. However, the seller instead sent just a single blade<\/em>, not the clipper. Subsequently, that seller claimed that Amazon<\/a> had screwed-up what was supposed to be a listing for just that blade (at what would not<\/em> have been even a good<\/em> price), and Amazon<\/a> simply refused to claim much at all. No one took responsibility, though my money was eventually refunded and the seller had provided a pre-paid return-shipment label for the blade.<\/p>

In any case, I now had it in my head to get a clipper of higher quality than that which I'd been using. (Meanwhile, Target<\/a> no longer carried Oster<\/a> clippers of any sort.) I decided to get an Oster Classic 76 clipper<\/a> \"\"<\/a> which is a work-horse clipper popular amongst barbers.<\/p>

There were a couple of vendors on eBay<\/a> who offered what seemed to be good prices, but when I looked at some of the negative feedback<\/a> for each, I decided that I was not sufficiently confident to buy from either. The next best price that I found was at Brighton Beauty Supply<\/a> (especially as Brighton Beauty Supply<\/a> offered free shipping on orders over $49.95). Brighton Beauty Supply<\/a> was not particularly quick to get my order shipped (and neglected to send the promised free gift<\/q><\/a> of ½ fl. oz.<\/abbr> of shampoo with an order over $100), but the clipper arrived yester-day.<\/p>

Probably mostly because of a superior blade, the clipper<\/a> cut through my hair far more smoothly than had the previous clipper. It's a little more difficult to fit the Universal<\/q> guide-comb<\/a> on it than onto the previous clipper, but it's not really a problem.<\/p>

The instructions for the Oster Classic 76 clipper<\/a> say that it will work best after it has been broken-in, which they say should take about four-to-six weeks. The problem here is that those would be four-to-six weeks of regular barbering. That would be something like four hundred<\/em> hair-cuts.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Quite a few years ago, at the suggestion of a barber, I switched to getting buzz-cut hair-cuts. Some years after that, I spotted an Oster Teq clipper at Target, for something less than the price of three hair-cuts. I've been cutting my own hair ever since. Results have usually been satisfactory, with one exception where […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,4],"tags":[730,731,732,733,549],"class_list":["post-2964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","category-public","tag-barbering","tag-clippers","tag-hair-clippers","tag-oster","tag-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2964\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}