Thread: Stropping/HHT question...

kurtismj,

As others have said do not worry about the HHT !

As I have have a 'high & tight' haircut, the only suitable hair I have in the house is my wifes.

Her hair is so fine that no DE razor blade, not even Feathers, will pass the HHT with it. What does that prove ? - absolutely nothing !

Just shave with your razor; as Mr Abrams has said, the shave will tell you everything you need to know about your razors edge

Have fun & good shaving !

Best regards

Russ

Yes I don´t worry at the HHT at all but I wonder about the hair structure. Why do the SRP Wiki say that you should hold the hair in the rootside and others tell the opposite? I thought that the edge was supposed to catch between the "hair scales" at maximum ease and wonder wich way is right.
My own guess is that holding the hair in the top is the easiest way to get a good catch.

My understanding was that traditionally it is done with the root out so that the weight of the root would get you better stability. I find a few things in the Wiki, now and then, don't jive with my research or understanding. But, that is why it's called a Wiki and not an Encyclopedia.

But I presume that the shingles of the hair it pointing upward from the head and thereby I must hold the hair at the tip when performing the test.
The Wiki at SRP uses similar text as this site but at one place it says holding "at the root side" and the other "at the tip side"

Hanging Hair Test, from trick to probing method - Straight Razor Place Wiki

http://www.coticule.be/hanging-hair-test.html

I've tried to do some research on the HHT, and I would go with the second site you list.

One of the reasons that the HHT is such a mystery is that the minute it gets brought up it gets dismissed as a parlor trick. The second site you list at least tries to make some sense of it. I've still never "shave-tested". The HHT allows me to avoid that and just know from its results whether my blade is ready for shaving without having to shave to find that out.

I remain firmly convinced that we need some ingenious entrepreneur to market certified and approved hairs on which to hang these sharpness tests. Something like: blond #5, brunette #2, and red #6 with auburn #4 for a close equivalent. Your razor with your hair may do just fine with the vaunted HH test, but will it shine so brightly when tested with my hair? Perhaps not. Thus, for fairness and certainty, I think the media on which we hang this test can only be those certified and approved strands.

Then when your razor lops the hung strand of auburn #4, held by the standard blue dyed root end, and mine does as well, we will both know that our razors are equivalently sharp and either will shave the other's face to the same BB smoothness.

Now, of course, we will need an approved method to determine just how smooth is that babe's butt and on whose Herculean shoulders we will pile these great tasks.

I always thought that you do the HHT holding the root end because that is how the hair grows from your face.

Or, maybe we should hold it at the tip or top end. Isn't that how it's harvested? Hold the tip, pinching as hard as you can and yank for all you're worth? Then with tears streaming down the cheeks you are about to shave, still grasping that testing strand by its tip, you apply the root end of that just plucked hair to the razor's edge. Hair cleaves and you're good to go, shave that is. Hair recoils, laughing at the razor's attempt at rendering it in twain, showing the shaver that his hone work was for naught and that at best he can only hope to shave again another day.

I forget who figured it out but because of the 'shingle' construction of the hair it is easier to get a positive HHT with the root out. I learned holding the root in, and could get it that way too more often than not, but now I always hold it root out. I need all the help I can get. Give it a try both ways and decide for yourself if there is any merit to one way as opposed to the other.

Originally Posted by ace

One of the reasons that the HHT is such a mystery is that the minute it gets brought up it gets dismissed as a parlor trick. The second site you list at least tries to make some sense of it. I've still never "shave-tested". The HHT allows me to avoid that and just know from its results whether my blade is ready for shaving without having to shave to find that out.

At present my body produces about 6 different types of hair, and each of them interacts very differently with an edge of a razor at any stage of it's sharpness, plus for a given hair and condition of it (freshly shampooed, dry, wet, holding it by the root or by the tip, distance from point of holding it to the edge, distance from the root to the edge) each of the over 500 razors I've used since becoming relatively proficient is interacting different with the hair.

So, if my own hair does very different things on the same razor, that's the only necessary datapoint that renders useless the simplistic yet most popular use of HHT without any regard of the hair itself.

Now, if you want to insist that you've got a test with hanging hairs that works for most people who haven't even held a razor, moreover have any idea what its edge should be at various points of honing and stropping, that'd just demonstrate how over your head you are.

Because of the simplicity you're implying, I'm absolutely certain that my definition of a passing HHT is vastly different than yours. My, and for that matter anybody else's, shave-worthy edges don't necessarily split my hair in two pieces.

In fact I don't even have to use hair or touch the edge in any way to know the razor will shave well - just looking at the microscope and the motion of the water during the honing stroke I know exactly when the razor is good. (I always strop more than the minimum needed, so that's not a factor.)

So, yeah HHT is absolutely a parlor trick until one knows how to use it properly to test edges, but at that point there are far quicker and better tests than HHT.

Originally Posted by Portra160

But I presume that the shingles of the hair it pointing upward from the head and thereby I must hold the hair at the tip when performing the test.

I hold it by the root. The hair is covered with a layer of dead cells called cuticle which is like shingles on a roof. The open ends point away from the root, so if you hold the hair by the tip it's easier for the razor edge to grab the hair by wedging in the gaps of those shingles.

But it really doesn't matter - to make a useful HHT you'll have to correlate the way your hair (or different types of it) interacts with various razor edges. When you find something that consistently shows a difference between edges that shave well and edges that do not, only then you can use it to extrapolate to predict how would an unknown edge shave based on the test. So, if holding the hair by the tip produces that difference do that, if holding it by the root does that then you know what to do.

It's really very simple as long as you understand that calibration lies in the essence of the test, and not just follow blindly somebody's procedure even if said procedure works perfectly for them and they'd swear it's the equivalent of 1+1=2.