Unpopular opinion: I was cutting fades way too fast for 2 years and didn't know it
Honestly I thought I was fast with clippers until a dude named Marcus at a shop in Toledo watched me do a skin fade and asked why I was rushing the lever. He pulled out a little flashlight and showed me 4 hard lines I'd left behind on a guy's head I'd just finished. Tbh I was blending with the corner of the blade instead of the flat, and cheaper clippers made it feel like the blade was dull when it was really my wrist angle the whole time. Ngl I spent 30 minutes the next day just doing lever passes on a mannequin head and it clicked. Has anyone else had a moment like that where you blamed your tools for something that was really your form?
Oh man, I feel this in my soul. I spent a whole year convinced my cheap Wahl was the problem and even told a client that once, then my mentor made me do a fade where I watched my own wrist in the mirror and turns out I was tilting the clipper like I was scooping ice cream. Went home and practiced on my own leg for like 20 minutes, which my girlfriend thought was insane but whatever, it worked. The corner of the blade thing is so real too, nobody tells you to keep it flat when you're first learning.