Thread: Why HHT is important or is not?

Originally Posted by Doc226

I don't know why the HHT haters hate it.

I don't know anyone that hates it and wouldn't understand why anyone would hate it if they did. It's not to be loved or hated. It can indicates that a razor is sharp to one degree or another. That's worth something. It's not a litmus test for shave readiness, though, in my opinion. It is what it is and it's as useful as someone feels it is for them for whatever they're testing, however they're testing and for whatever reason they're testing.

When hairs see my razor edges they hang themselves in defeat!

That must've been what happened to the ones on my head!

James.

You guys are just splitting hairs now................)

FINAL AND LAST UPDATE!!!!
I have achieved HHT3 and HHT4 on my razors by switching to vintage horse strop. Looks like my strop wasn`t good enough. Shaving is smooth without major and shaving quality has improved. Looks like my honing technique is OK. Thank you all!

Hi Proximus,

I've had two pieces of hardware change my razor experiences: a Naniwa 12k hone and, more recently, a horse shell strop. Yes, sometimes it is our hardware holding us back.

I skipped to the end of this thread from the second page of posts, so don' know if anyone posted any "how-to" on calibrating your HHT. Here's how I did it for myself:

1) Identify suitable hairs. Mine are my chest hairs, in particular, the white ones. Dark pigment toughens hairs; that's why you see it at the tips of wild animals' hairs, for abrasion resistance. For your best internal replicability, always do your HHT with hairs that have been recently washed, so they'll have consistent hydration, sebum load, etc. from test to test.

2) Select a razor that shaved well for you last time you used it. Before your preshave stropping, do your HHT.

3) Do you linen-side stropping passes, the normal number. Repeat HHT and note any change.

4) Now do your normal count of leather-side stropping passes, repeat your HHT, and note any change. If your linen strop imparts any toothiness to the edge, you might actually notice a decrease in HHT performance from the linen stropping to the leather stropping, as teeth in the blade are better at the initial piercing of the hair's cuticle than a smoother edge will be, given the same keenness. I'd wager, though, that the linen-only edge would give you a harsher shave than the linen-then-leather edge.

5) Perform your normal shave and rinse & dry, but don't yet strop, your blade. Repeat the HHT and note how much wear and tear your edge picks up during normal use.

6) NOW do your normal postshave stropping (30 or so laps is what most folks write about using), and repeat your HHT. Note how much of the wear and tear is corrected by this stropping.

7) Do your normal preshave stropping routine, then another HHT to see how much improvement that stropping routine brings. If you still have a good sense of how your HHT performed back in Step 2, then you can appreciate how much a little oxidation affects your edge between uses (that is, if you don't oil your blade before putting it away).

What all these steps do is give you a sense of your HHT's sensitivity, and also an appreciation of how much a shave dings up your blade's edge. Everyone's experience with this will be extremely personal, given that some of our beards are much harder on the blades than other's, and that the hairs we each use for our HHTs are very different from one another's. There is no sense discussing the HHT, or even an HHT; the only sense comes after you've calibrated your HHT.

It's not even quite accurate to use the term "calibrate" here, since calibration implies a common standard. I'll reiterate: You're just demonstrating to yourself your HHT's sensitivity to what your blade experiences during normal use and storage. That experience will make your HHT more informative to you, but will not enable you to make any better comparisons to other peoples' HHT results. It is a personal and relative test, not an absolute one nor one replicable by other shavers.

And, as is always emphasized in discussions of this topic, the only way to determine if an edge will shave well is by shaving with it. Over time, you'll learn that your HHT has some predictive value, but again, it's unlikely that your prediction points will be the same for your shaves as another person's prediction points are for his shave. In addition, wonderful shaving edges from some hones will perform very poorly at HHTs. I've had this experience with an Asagi edge another member put on a blade I bought from him. It was a dazzling shaving edge, extremely nonirritating and though lethal to hairs, extremely reluctant to sever skin. Once, I made a bad pass with that blade that should have cost me a decent fraction of my lower lip, but escaped unscathed. That edge would not pass my HHT very well. For that reason, your HHT is not a fair evaluation of an edge you've recieved from another honer. Only a full shave will provide a fair evaluation.

That, in more or less the long version, is my experience with my HHT. May yours be as useful to you.

When I transitioned to honing in circles I had trouble with any hanging hair test greater than 3.14

Makes me wonder if our ancestors who invented straight razors went thru all this HHT stuff back in the day.

Originally Posted by pixelfixed

Makes me wonder if our ancestors who invented straight razors went thru all this HHT stuff back in the day.

Send a PM to thebigspendur and ask him ?

I'm just wondering what the limit is ? Is is 1 through 10 ...... 1 through infinity ?

Does a shave with an HHT3 blade feel inferior to an HHT5 ? Inquiring minds want to know these things ......

I've been doing some research into this area myself Jimmy, and have come up with a model for the HHT number, x, as in HHT-x:

x = Go * exp(GI),

where Go is the base gullibility of the general populace, and GI is the gullibility index of the individual to whom you are trying to flog your product. So in theory there is no limit to the HHT number.

James.