honing progression and hht
I think I'm starting to get this honing thing down but I'm still just not passing the hht on some razors. I'm trying to keep the strokes on the hone and pressure on the hone to a minimum but it I'm just not passing this hanging hair test with some.
I'm doing the norton pyramid, followed by the coticule, and I've got a pasted strop with .5 and .25 pastes. Do I want the razor to pass the hht before I move from the norton to the coticule?
TESTS, TESTS, and MORE TESTS
OK,
so you're honing along, and you want to get a sense for where the blade is... you try a fingernail test, and you get your idea, but probably you just damaged your edge a bit.
So you're honing along some more, and you want to check your progress, you do a thumb pad test maybe... now you've got another measuring stick to guage where the edge is, but you also are ruining your edge a tiny bit by rubbing your thumb over it like that.
So you complete a few more strokes, probably finishing off your Norton 8k pyramid, and you do a hair test. Either moving the blade into the upper tufts of your arm hair to see how it 'bites' or cleaves the hair, or you do the Hanging Hair Test to see if it cleaves the hair. Either it passes, or it doesn't, but at least you didn't wreck the blade this time checking.
Hopefully it'll pass, but if it doesn't, it doesn't mean your edge isn't shaveable. So you strop it a good number of times, maybe linen first, maybe on pasted paddles, finishing up on smooth (clean) leather.
Now you shave with it, and whaddya know - it shave that stubble off your ugly mugg. It might not be as SMOOTH as a Lynn honed razor, but it's cutting the hair and not causing too much discomfort. So what does this mean if you didn't pass a HHT?
What I've come to realize is that while a HHT can tell you if your blade is sharp and smooth, not passing doesn't mean that you can't shave. Passing a HHT basically tells you that your blade is as pretty F*ing good; like getting a B+/A- on your razor test. But what if you got a B/B- blade? Well, you're not failing, and you're not being told it's not good enough.
- So imagine you pass a HHT - you think the blade is good at this point, and you strop it and shave with it and low & behold you're right - it's a smooth shaver.
- Well, what if you pass the HHT and you mess up in stropping it, now your shave isn't as smooth as you'd hoped - so what did that HHT actually tell you? Nothing, I guess - just that you were close, and now it's not.
- And what if you don't pass the HHT? You strop it and shave with it, and it shaves alright. Sure it could be smoother, but it'll get you through the week until next weekend when you have time to try to hone it better.
- Or you could fail the HHT and try to shave with it and it a) doesn't cut your whiskers, b) pulls like the dickens at every hair, c) causes you some razor burn.
But basically, the HHT is not the B-ALL-END-ALL answer to test where your blade is at - your face is for that. The HHT CAN tell you something, but it isn't EVERYTHING!