hair cutting tips

[cwjalex]

i have been cutting my own hair for a few years now and i'm pretty inconsistent at it.  it's usually okay but sometimes i do a much better job than other times.  i really have no idea what i'm doing and just try to cut a lot of different lengths.  any professional stylists or barbers out there that can give me any tips? or anyone who cuts their own hair?  i also find the back to be incredibly difficult to cut since i can't really see it.  i have fairly long hair for a guy.  i'm korean and i have that typical asian hair where it's kind of messy and different lengths.  i've got bangs that are long enough to cover my eyes.

[faulty_damper]

I've been cutting my own hair for several years.  The back was the most difficult but since cutting it more often, it's much easier to do now.  Practice!  Use a mirror.  My hair is short and I cut with clippers almost exclusively.  It took several years to get good at it.  What made the difference was being able to mentally see what I was doing without having to look in the mirror.  That means seeing myself as a third person while I'm cutting.

The biggest hurdle was getting over the fear of cutting off too much; I was always very nervous while cutting.  So, after several months of thinking about doing it, I finally shaved it all off one day.  Then I took a razor and polished it off like a bowling ball and let it grow back.  This helped tremendously because now I didn't have any fear of being bald and I learned the direction of hair growth, which is important to know the direction of cutting.

[fifthelegy]

Have you tried searching youtube how-to tutorials? they are a godsend I swear, and there's many on cutting men's hair. I've been cutting my own hair for years as well now, I do have long hair though being female so it'd be different to cutting yours but I've been giving haircuts to male friends too. I'm no professional hairdresser but a good pair of hair clippers really makes the job so much easier.

[Bob]

What about trimming?  And sideburns and beard/moustache trimming? 

Or, at the least, trimming enough to put off a haircut for a while.  Do that enough and it will really add up.  Roughly calculating, I'm pretty sure I've saved over a $1,000 doing that.  At least.  That's over years and years and years though.

[indianajo]

I've started cutting my own hair, when I don't live out of town at my summer camp.  There is a good barber out there in the country, but not one here in  the 'ville.  The one barbershop downtown by the courthouse, the woman always wants to trim down my eyebrows.   I'm part native Am and am proud of my bushy eyebrows and lack of beard.  
I've started cutting the basic Clark Kent (Superman before the phone booth) hair outside without a mirror.  I just pull the hair out from the head and make the lower part about 1/2 finger width, the middle about a finger width, the next stripe about 1.5 finger width, and the top about three or four fingers.  No sweat.  
If you were going to style it, I suppose you would need a mirror.  The standard 1A style is pretty easy. Occasionally I get the scissors twisted from level and cut too much off.  Its okay, it grows back in two days, and nobody ever says anything.  I'm even more forgettable than Clark Kent, more like Jimmy the News boy his friend.  
I'd like sometime to let it grow out and do braids like Tonto (the Lone Ranger's companion, (the TV version, not the Johnny Depp coiture de salon), since I'm partially  Native Am and look it.  But I don't know how to do braids and am afraid to experiment.  Until braids get over a foot long I think long hair looks really stupid on guys, like Cheech & Chong.  Tecumseh wore a bowl cut staight around below his ears, maybe I'll try that this spring. I'ts new name is the Shirley Temple, but I'll know what I mean, Tecumseh the last great fighter before we natives went to hiding in mountains and swamps that nobody wanted. (I'm Eastern Appalachian Native Am whose ancestors survived as woodcutters and coal miners, ).