About 'BACKBONE'

About 'BACKBONE'

Classic loft settings are around 48-52mm.

Because of the different shapes of Bulb and Fan, the height of the edge hair is different, so the loft settings are different.

In general, Backbone is determined by a combination of five factors:
1. Density
2. loft
3. Shape
4. Raw materials
5. Free backbone

But for the same grade of raw materials and the same density, the loft we use is not much different.
Such as Class A-1 and A-2.

In the actual test, A-2 has more neat raw materials, so the advantage of long hair tip is that the touch is very soft and very luxurious, but there is also a problem, the hair tip part has no backbone, and the hair tip is too long It will cause a sense of fault, and there will be a very obvious difference in softness and hardness between the hair tip and the hair trunk.

Therefore, this part of the difference, people are used to calling it characteristics.

But I have already explained the actual reasons. If A-2 is not carefully screened, but some two band badger hair with shorter hair tip is mixed into it, it will balance this point and obtain better balance.

We now refer to this part of the theory as tuning blending.

Therefore, we have to test each batch of badger knots and set up a standard loft based on the above five factors.

The so-called standard loft is suitable for most users.

1. Density

Density determines the backbone and efficiency of foaming. Excessive density will sacrifice efficiency and increase backbone. Therefore, at this stage, extremely high density is only suitable for the production of high-end raw materials. High-end raw materials do not need to be processed in depth to ensure The integrity of each badger hair is improved, but too high density requires increasing the loft height. Once the height is increased too much, it will cause a sense of fault, which is beyond the scope of loft.

2. loft

The reason why I put loft in the second place is because loft has become a relatively fixed value. As long as one of the five factors can be fixed, the other four factors can be adjusted, so we will fix it at 49-51mm in most cases ( Fan), 50-52mm (bulb), as we all know, turning it up will reduce the backbone, and turning it down will increase the backbone.

3. Shape

There are actually four shapes, and there are two other shapes besides Bulb and Fan, but they are rare.
The current fan is actually closer to the hybrid, yes, because the hybrid will have a certain arc, but it is still the category of the fan. This shape makes the tactile transition more reasonable.
For example, the overall height of Bulb is 70mm, but the height of the edge hair is only 50mm, the overall height of Fan is 70mm, and the height of the edge hair is 60mm.
So Bulb's settings are a little higher than Fan's.

4. Raw materials

This is the hardest part to explain, but in general, high-end raw materials have two characteristics:
1. Longer hair tip.
2. Thicker badger hair diameter.
But because of the complexity of raw materials, sometimes this feature is not universal.
So artisan will be divided into batches.

5. Free backbone

When we made the handtied knot, we fully considered this factor, so our handtied was also increased to 70mm, so that at least 7-10mm of free backbone space can be reserved.
The meaning of free backbone is to improve flexibility.

These common factors create the Loft, or the different touches.
But the practical level may also consider the processing level.
This is too complicated.

 

Miya

Back to blog