Electric clippers or Buzzers are used to level off sideburns, shape mustaches and beards, or cut hair on the head. A series of attachments or blades is fit over the clippers to adjust the length of hair left on the head.

Requesting the use of a particular blade is far more precise than requesting a particular style. Perceptions of style vary, but blade lengths are standardized. Here's some information (more below!) on the top three clipper brands and their different blades/attachements:

There are two kinds of clippers. Most home-haircutting sets come with vibrating clippers. The blades on these clippers are "fixed blades." They cannot be taken off and replaced except wi th a screw driver. Most often the blades on these clippers are triple zero blades. Sometimes they come with double zero blades which cut the hair just a small fraction of an inch longer than triple zeroes. Fixed blades cut the hair through vibration caused by electromagnets.

With a fixed blade clipper, you can fasten plastic "attachments" or "guide combs" which add a certain amount of length to the cut given by the blade.

Motor-driven clippers have REMOVABLE BLADES. These blades cut mechanically. The clipper motor causes a mechanical DRIVE POST to oscillate back and forth. If you want a triple zero cut, you fasten a triple zero BLADE or CUTTING HEAD onto the drive post.

Some people call these cutting heads ATTACHMENTS, which is where the confusion comes in because these "attachments" are really blades, while the attachments on vibrator clippers fasten onto the blades. A five-zero or 00000 haircut would be given by a motor-driven clipper with a five-zero BLADE fastened onto the cutting post. So the companies DO make different BLADES with very small differences in the cutting length.

There's a ZERO-BLADE, a DOUBLE-ZERO BLADE, then TRIPLE-ZERO BLADE, QUADRUPLE--ZERO or FOUR-ZERO BLADE, and finally the newer FIVE-ZERO BLADE which is the shortest blade available for electric clippers.

Another clipper type is the OUTLINER clipper, which is a fixed-blade clipper with have a four-zero blade on them for doing fine work around ears or other places where you want to make smaller, more precise clipper lines. For a long time the outliner clippers gave the shortest cut possible to get with clippers — until the five-zero detachable blades became available for motor-driven clippers.

Before, to buzz hair down as close as possible to the scalp, the barber would use a triple-zero blade on vibrator clippers (bare clippers, no plastic attachment) or motor-driven clippers with a triple-zero blade fastened onto the drive post. Then the barber would use the outliner clippers to go over the triple zero cut and take it down to the "skin," using the four-zero FIXED BLADE on the outliner clippers. Now, with the FIVE-ZERO blade, it's possible to buzz hair even shorter than outliner clippers right from the start.

(Written by BillS)

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