Thread: Rambling thoughts on "Sharpness Tests"

i use coticule and i make HHT with a thick hair root out for the first step. if it passes HHT2 i continue honing until it passes HHT3. i still continue with lighter strokes until i get HHT4. then i switch to BBW side using very light strokes only with water and i get silently falling hairs on my arm without touching the blade to the skin. next step is stropping. after stropping i use very thin hairs for the hanging hair test and i get HHT5 of the both ways of the hair. that's all.

Originally Posted by linguist

i use coticule and i make HHT with a thick hair root out for the first step. if it passes HHT2 i continue honing until it passes HHT3. i still continue with lighter strokes until i get HHT4. then i switch to BBW side using very light strokes only with water and i get silently falling hairs on my arm without touching the blade to the skin. next step is stropping. after stropping i use very thin hairs for the hanging hair test and i get HHT5 of the both ways of the hair. that's all.

Are all these hair tests calibrated so that at the end you know it will be a smooth shaving razor? Do you still do the shave test as your final assessment of the blade?

when i get HHT5 with the thinnest hair by holding the root i can get the same result with any kind of hair like thick, clean, oily etc. i use the same hair with feather DE blade and the test can reach to HHT4. i mean very thin hair root bottom.
here is my test. then i make shave test. very keen very smooth at ATG as well. every time i can estimate the shave result by this test.
[video=youtube]http://

@Linguist

I cannot argue success and if you get smooth comfortable shaves then keep doing what your doing..

But

The test has zero bearing on your success

The scale is arbitrary at best, and misleading at worst, the only reason I haven't taken it out of our Wiki, is that it gets newbs at least thinking that calibration is necessary for the HHT to be of any use at all...
Your test vid shows the same spot ie: the middle of the edge everytime, I hope in real life you are testing at least 5 spots on the edge basically every 1/2 inch from toe to heel...
The HHT is working for you and you have it dialed in, but the exact same edge honed the exact same way, by you, will not give the same outcome for somebody else trying the HHT with their hair, and there is where you find the inherent fallacies of any of these sharpness tests ie: your HHT 5 could be my HHT 1 or HHT 10 ... My sticky TPT might not work for your Thumb Pad

Each person has to develop their tests, as they develop their own honing skills

gssixgun i have learnt many of honing from your videos. nice to talk to you here.
i totally agree with you what you wrote above. these tests make sense only for me and i hone only for myself. it suits me and i can estimate how my razors can shave.
it is totally personel choice. on the other hand i think anyone can get the same result with any type of hair with my razor but someone loves its shave and someone hates. that's the difference. personally i don't like the shaves below HHT4 according to my calibration.
PS: it has the same result all along the edge from heel to point

Well being a noob - what you call "subjective," I call voodoo lol. : ) Well, it’s voodoo for me anyway lol. Semantics ; ).

If I read between the lines correctly - this will be a lifelong learning endeavor for me. I am not only comfortable with that, I embrace it! Were it any other way for me, honing would be a task that I repeat rather than the hobby it’s become.

Thanks for the reminder!

I"m a bit tough on myself when doin'g the shaving test, I go do[WTG] on my cheek one time lightly, if it feel to be just skin were the beard was and only a very light amount of beard left when stroking my fingers ATG then I know I did good, then I finish the shave and if it consistanly gives the same quality of shave on the other side of my face I'm pretty certain at that point I'm not guilty of a wire edge that will peel off with continual shaving.
All in all, it's a strange and intersesting journey, and I'm happy to take it.
Shaving with brush and str8's gives me a feeling of smoothness and a feeling of comfort I never had with quad blade razors and canned goo on my face!

gssixgun its shave is like this.


5/8 E.A Berg Eskilstuna

(i hesitated to put the video to this threat so it can be deleted if this massage is not proper)

I've watched all GSSIXGUN's youtube videos, about a half a dozen others, Lyn's videos, and read up on as much I could muster on the subject. I have two, $50 straight razors, a dovo and a fromme from a kit. By some miracle of God, I honed the fromme better than when it came from the company. The other one, the dovo, I have tried and tried and get nowhere. I'm using a Norton 1k and Norton 4k/8k. i carefully lap the stones with a Dia Sharp then 320 wet or dry sand paper. The blade just never sits right on the stone. One side or the other is always up in the air.

I've learned I think that I simply don't have the skill to maneuver this blade in a rocking motion with any degree of accuracy yet. I'm not buying more stones, nor am I going to buy more blades. I'm going to just keep working on this thing till I beat it, or it beats me. But bevel setting, for this noob, is a baffling mystery. It looks so easy when someone else does it. But the finesse and skill required is currently beyond my abilities. The other blade works just fine, though I dread when that one will have to be honed again in probably 5-6 months. I just got lucky the first time. I do find most of the tests I've read about to be somewhat subjective; but dull is dull is dull; and that is about all I know. So, I'll just keep working on this razor and hopefully, eventually, acquire the skill by practice over time. Thanx for all your info.

A lot of the sharpening stuff is like hogan said about the golf swing - the secret is in the dirt. You have to figure it out for yourself, and if you're going to do the HHT or something, you have to know what the results with your hair mean in translating to a shave.

So a lot of people use all of these tests because they don't feel like they have the experience to know whether or not an edge is sharp without them, but in reality, you don't really know what you need to glean from the tests of an edge until you've shaved with the results and examined both the results themselves as well as the consistency of what they provide.

From time to time, I will pull a hair out of my head and do the HHT on both sides of the razor, but I know what it means to me. It doesn't tell me nearly as much about my razor as does a shave, so there's really no need to do it at all. I do know that I'll go back to improving the edge of a razor before it ever gets close to the edge an 8k stone will put on it in any way shape or form (dry, wet, light pressure, whatever...), and that's long before anything will fail at least some level of the hanging hair test.

But I know that from experience, that's all most people need - experience and critical examination of what they're doing to make sure their experience is leading to improvement and not just repetition.