Thread: HHT question

For most noob honers, HHT should be HTT: Hanging Thumb Test, as most nick their thumb as opposed to the hair it's holding.

Edit: for proof of the above I offer this.
http://straightrazorpalace.com/begin...one-wrong.html

Originally Posted by mapleleafalumnus

For most noob honers, HHT should be HTT: Hanging Thumb Test, as most nick their thumb as opposed to the hair it's holding.

LOL....How about the TPPT..."Thumb-Pad Penetration Test"?? I seem to be really good at that!!

Funny-When I'm honing several razors, followed by kitchen knives (my usual method), between the slurry dust and constant TPT's, my left thumb gets pretty shredded, and my legs lose a lot of hair.

Originally Posted by ScoutHikerDad

Funny-When I'm honing several razors, followed by kitchen knives (my usual method), between the slurry dust and constant TPT's, my left thumb gets pretty shredded, and my legs lose a lot of hair.

Hone mange...the next great epidemic!

I've been using the HHT to evaluate my razors after honing and before shaving for two years without a problem.

The fact that hairs are different is not a problem at all. In fact it is quite the opposite. The different types of hair allow the honer to evaluate his progress. I use hairs from all kinds of sources, the ladies at work, chest hair, and I'll go no further than that. I've never had a blade perform the HHT on a finer hair without then producing a great shave. The shave may be the ultimate test, but it is nice to have a test I can perform right at the hones without having to lather up, etc. Like the Library makes clear, it is not a binary, fail or pass test. It takes some time to get comfortable with it and be able to predict shaving results from how a single hair behaves on the blade. Like any test, it is too easy to blame the test for bad results, but it is not the fault of the HHT but the fault of one who is using it without putting in the due diligence to get it to work efficiently and predictably.

Originally Posted by ScoutHikerDad

Funny-When I'm honing several razors, followed by kitchen knives (my usual method), between the slurry dust and constant TPT's, my left thumb gets pretty shredded, and my legs lose a lot of hair.

I leave my thumb alone but I spent the Christmas break honing and honing and honing on my brand new Zulu Grey. My arms were as smooth as a baby's bottom, and legs had very strange smooth patches all over them. Arms are slowly recovering to a stubble stage so I can start honing again soon! Good thing it is long sleeve and pant season right now!!!

Originally Posted by ScoutHikerDad

Funny-When I'm honing several razors, followed by kitchen knives (my usual method), between the slurry dust and constant TPT's, my left thumb gets pretty shredded, and my legs lose a lot of hair.

I leave my thumb alone but I spent the Christmas break honing and honing and honing on my brand new Zulu Grey. My arms were as smooth as a baby's bottom, and legs had very strange smooth patches all over them. Arms are slowly recovering to a stubble stage so I can start honing again soon! Good thing it is long sleeve and pant season right now!!!

The HHT is not a pointless exercise - it can be an excellent shave-proxy if combined with sufficient and pertinent data, like all tests and measures.

However, because it is a test it does need to be calibrated to you and your shaves - this is the "sufficient and pertinent data" bit. And unfortunately collecting that data takes time - repeated association between a particular HHT and the subsequent shave, over and over (and over) again. People may call this "experience", but I tend to view it as more regulated and directed than a series of mere experiences. But I guess that is not important...

Beware, however, these ridiculous categorisations of the HHT that you see bandied about. Even if theoretically there is such a thing as a "HHT1, HHT2, ...." etc, obtaining enough information (data) to adequately differentiate between the gradations of this ordinal scale makes their practical use extremely limited on an individual level, and absolutely laughable as an inter-rater descriptor of any merit whatsoever.

Finally, to answer your question, there is nothing wrong with using the "short and curly" hairs for the HHT. The key (see second paragraph above) is to be consistent so that your data collection is kept to a minimum. Every new "kind" of hair you decide to use creates another calibration scenario to collect data about, so if you go for the chest hairs, stick with them (for example).

Good luck,

James.

There are some good points here...but this topic is on rotation (it comes up every few months it seems).

If anyone cares, I use the hair on my arm, and my test is to cut hairs about 5mm above the skin in many places on the blade. I do not use this as a test of sharpness really, I use it as a gauge of uniformity of sharpness.

Perhaps my arm hair varies with humidity/time of year/menstrual cycle....I do not care. How the blade cuts the hair on that day can be observed, and I want all portions of the blade to cut it the same way