Thread: Stropping with diamond paste after 4k?

You can easily cut hair at 1,000 grit/15.0um. 8k is about 2um, and .50um is about 30K.

Cutting hair and shaving… comfortably are two different things.

An edge will not get straight until after 8k, on most synthetic stones. You can shave off a 1k edge, but why?

Which is why HHT is so unreliable. You can cut a hair with a razor honed a 600 grit, maybe less, depending on how it was honed, on which hone, the razor and the honer. HHT may be a valid test for you, if you calibrate the test to your hair and skill level.

Your results may only be valid for you, but you can use it. HHT numbers, that folks throw out, mean nothing for the rest of us and do not predict the shave quality of a razor, most simply because they are so subjective.

Calibrate the test, cut as much hair, (use the same hair) with as many different known edges as possible and eventually you will be able to predict what your edges will do for you, based on your test. But don’t get caught up in rating the quality of an HHT. It’s kind of like tasting beer, which one is better?

I use a hair test at bevel set, just to tell me when the edge is getting close, after a positive TPT (Thumb Pad Test). If it passes both test, then I look at it. 3 test.

Until you get much more experience, you cannot rely on a single test, even then a couple seconds to run another test is cheap insurance, to spending time running through a progression, only to find you have an issue that could have easily been resolved with a few more laps on the bevel setting stone.