Thread: how the hanging hair test should look?

Hi Guys,

After posting the thread on merkurs and if peeps in here use them, i decided, that, because i love shaving and everything associated, i should splash out on one for thoses times when travelling or time is a little short. I bought the merkur in brushed chrome and it looks and shaves like nothing else apart from a straight!

The sideline to this is, that, i pop hairs on my straight most times, but was never really sure how the hair should respond to the edge, ie, how it should look and 'feel'.

So , out of interest i took a merkur blade, and passed a hair over it. It simply fell away, no pop at all. All the way along the edge. No pressure or drag, just a beautiful clean separation. It even sliced one hair through it's length!!! The hairs i used were from my head too, which are heavy and black.

It kinda put what i thought was my sharp straight in a slightly lower league to the merkur. I was glad though, because it inspired me to achieve the same results with my straight as the merkur.

I decided to hit the strop. I held the strop very taught and did cycles of 50. Now after the first lot, i noticed a big improvement. I went for it again, and i am there. The hanging hair test is how i think it is intended to be. (plain strop by the way, no pastes) I think my stropping was always cut short through fear of over stropping?! but this showed i needed to go that bit further.

I haven't shaved with it yet, and i'm aware the hanging hair test doesn't mean a great shave but i reckon there will be a marked improvement, just by the way the hair stays on the blade when separated, it no longer jumps or twitches.

Comments would be appreciated!! (i'll let you know how the shave is too!)

By the way, the whole point of this, was, it might be good for other newbies to buy a pack of blades to SEE the hair test, rather than just build a mental image of how it should happen?!

If you remember my "Stropping is King" post, what you are describing was one of my points.

I think you will find your shaves to be much better based the description of your HHT. I would be supprised to learn otherwise.


Scott

Ok, sorry to repeat, i'm a new guy, so bear with me!!! Thanks for the reply!

pea

I do the HHT off the 8k hone and try for the clean silent cut you describe. That's asking a lot, but if I can get close to that, I'm almost guaranteed a good shave. Usually I get a slight pop.

X

Originally Posted by xman

I do the HHT off the 8k hone and try for the clean silent cut you describe. That's asking a lot, but if I can get close to that, I'm almost guaranteed a good shave. Usually I get a slight pop.

X

I agree with Xman on this one. The HHT, for me, is performed on the the 8K. Passing the HHT off the strop is not hard to do.

so should i have spent more time on the 8k?

Some might say yes, but I think that's too easy an answer. To me the proper edge is built with the 4k and the 8k. If the edge is overhoned, it will equally fail the HHT as one that isn't honed enough. In fact more so sometimes. That's me using my wife's hair. Your experience will be equally unique. I think a more proper answer would be that you need to spend more attention easing the pressure off as you progress down the pyramid. It might also be that you need to make sure your pressure is more even all along the edge, but there are usually signs of this. Like that the hair responds at some points along the edge, but not at others.

The main reason to use the HHT off the 8k is that if I'm getting responses at this point I can feel more confident that the edge is properly built and after a few laps on a finishing hone and/or the pasted paddle that it'll give a good shave. The irony is that it seems to be getting easier for me to overhone my edges with the finishers because I'm getting better with the Norton Combo.

I don't want an easy catch. I'm not looking for the hairs to fall cleanly away without a sound off the finishing strop just like I don't want a woman to fall at my feet begging me to take her. That's too easy. That's not going to tell me much except that I know how to strop (or that I'm a magnet for the desperate). I'm looking for a determining test to expose the quality of the edge at the most important point in its creation. If that's a more challenging situation, then it's likely a good thing.

X