Shaving Perfection Part 4: Shaving Brushes
A shaving brush is a mandatory addition to your burgeoning shave den.
In addition to the advantages it has in creating a great lather, it's big, BIG advantage is holding lather between passes on your face, allowing you to re-apply lather without wasting precious additional cream. If you want the best lather, a brush really is your best, and in many ways, only option. I recommend getting a brush made of badger hair. A rock-bottom badger brush is available for less than $10 shipped through Amazon Prime, though I haven’t tried it. Nor will I, but more on that later.
Some Walgreens drugstores in upper-middle-class neighborhoods carry, very much to their credit, low-rent Boar’s hair brushes, usually in little green boxes under the ‘Van der Hagen’ brand. These are perfect if you hate yourself, or are just starting out. They’re scratchy as hell, don’t build a great lather, but they are better than nothing, and the handles of these brushes are nice and sturdy for other uses, as we shall see in a while. A well-made boar’s hair brush, on the other hand, can be an excellent tool, or so I’m told. Some folks swear by them, favoring brushes of boar over those of badger. I myself have not dared the shave gods by departing from tradition. Plus I have a good friend who grew up and went to college in Wisconsin, and as an Ohio State grad the idea that I can daily drown their mascot and rub its corpse all over my face is just so delicious.
Synthetic brushes are also available, and you may well find other oddities. Badger hair is best for shaving brushes, End of story.
Points to consider
There are three components to a brush:
Knot (the hair)
Adhesive
Handle
All else is window dressing. For our purposes, let’s address the latter two items, in order. The adhesive is simply that, the glue that holds the knot of hair in the handle. It's usually epoxy, and if assembling your own brush go with marine grade. The handle can be made from most anything, but generally a waterproof, corrosion-proof material is chosen. Ivory was traditional, but plastics/resins and stone are used nowadays. They can be made to look pretty, but this hardly matters. Unless it does to you.
The knot
Most every knot is made in the same way: hair is clumped together and (ideally) trimmed at the base, and the base is set in some sort of glue. In any case, the resulting knot of badger hair looks like this:
The base of the knot, the cylinder of glue above, gives the ‘diameter’ of the knot. Measurements below 20mm are small, above 24mm becoming quite large. The size of the knot really just reflects how much water/lather the brush can hold. Density also needs to be considered, different makers adding more or less hair to identically-sized knots. Less-dense brushes can flop around, while high-density ones can be really nice. Knots from lesser makers can tend to shed hair over time. And while all brushes shed at some rate, the best don’t shed hardly ever.
Grades of badger hair
In general, you get what you pay for. But is it any surprise that in a universe containing fancy razors, creams, and such, all that ridiculous bullshit won’t overflows into the brush world as well? There are four general grades of badger hair for brushes, listed from lower to higher quality below. The most obvious difference with better quality badger hair is how soft the tips are and how much water it holds. By an odd coincidence, the farther down this list, the more expensive the brushes become...
Note: I’d offer pictures, but color variations make this an exercise in futility. This is further complicated by the fact that some manufacturers will treat the hair to appear more cosmetically pleasing. Unscrupulous makers even adulterate their products. The color descriptions below are only the roughest of guides. If you’re curious, pure and silvertip varieties are presented in the above graphic. Still, don’t take those as the apotheosis of their respective grades. They’re just random examples.
Pure badger: all this means is that your brush is made from hair that has come from an animal science has broadly agreed is a ‘badger.’ It could have come from the animal’s cute little face. It could also, just as easily, have come from around its butthole, and thus been thrice-daily baptized in badger gravy. Caveat emptor. Color can vary, with grayish-tan predominating. It is more common for these brushes to have the tips trimmed to form the bulb, resulting in coarse tips. Pure badger will get the job done, but it tends to be bargain basement stuff, and rather scratchy. Still, it’ll lather up most anything that can lather, and do a good job of it. Nothing wrong with Pure badger, though if your skin is sensitive, you may want a softer brush.
Best badger: in spite of the name, ‘best’ badger hair is not, in fact, 'best.' It is ironically a lower grade. Are you getting a sense of the marketing nonsense at play here? It’s like shopping for a damn mattress. Best badger can also come from many parts of the badger, but the belly is a common source. The tips tend to be softer, but still have some scrubbiness. The hair tends to hold more water. Cosmetically, Best badger brushes tend to exhibit more color change from darker to lighter colors near the tip. Perfectly great brush for a normal person.
Super badger: yet again a grade softer. Thinner hair, so more hairs fit in an identical-diameter knot of lesser grades. Rarer, and therefore more expensive. Tips are sometimes treated to make them whiter. Excellent brush.
Silvertip badger: generally recognized as a top grade, though you’ll find all sorts of hoity-toity words being thrown about for additional refinements. At this point though, you risk suffering dramatic blood loss from laughing your ass off at the prices demanded. Silvertip is known to have very soft tips, a fact to which I will attest. Some people find them too soft. The color of the tips tend to be more grey than silver, and the hair is commonly sourced from the badger’s neck.
Sourcing shaving brushes
Once again, consult the websites mentioned in part two and three of this series. Nothing much changes. The least-expensive pure badger option from these retailers will usually be perfect to start out, and somewhere in the low to mid $20 range. Reliable brands include Vulfix or Simpson, though there are others. Some vendors have ‘house brands’, usually Vulfix brushes without markings or employing custom handles. Prices for shaving brushes become crazy VERY quickly, and these basic brushes will last a solid decade of daily use if you care for them properly.
An intriguing (and usually less expensive) option is to buy a knot and handle separately. I ordered a low-grade silvertip knot at an outstanding price from a now-defunct vendor, and mounted it to the handle of one of the Walgreens boar brushes mentioned earlier. I had to drill the old bristles and glue out, a hateful, shitty job, but I SAVED MONEY, DAMMIT. Rather a lot, actually.
And when I say ‘low-grade silvertip,’ I mean it. Third world manufacture -- the tips are not noticeably softer than the other brush I own, a first-class, English-made Truefitt & Hill Super Badger. Though theoretically a lesser item, the pricier name-brand brush is every bit as good (though different) from my ghetto Frankenstein brush. In the shaving brush industry, words don’t always mean what we think they should. Again, check sites like Badgerandblade.com for hundreds of reviews FAR more in-depth than you thought possibe for a simple clutch of animal hair glued into a chunk of plastic.
A word about used brushes: You can sterilize them with a borax solution, and they are immersed in soap every day. Used brushes can be perfectly acceptable if in good shape, though you would want to clean and sterilize them yourself regardless of the care you apply.
And if you see a nasty old brush sitting on the shelf at an antique dealer? NEVER USE IT. These can be reasonable sources of vintage handles in which to mount your own knots, but the bristles themselves are not to be trusted. EVER. Especially if they have yellowed and look like ass.
Brush Care
Shaving brushes are easy creatures to care for. Basically, all that’s required on a daily basis is to thoroughly rinse all the lather out with warm water after you’re done shaving, then shake out as much water as you can and let them air dry in an open area. Don’t shut them up in cupboards while wet or they could mold or otherwise deteriorate. And NEVER boil them or expose them to scalding hot water. Don’t pack them willy-nilly into a full suitcase or cram them into tight spaces. On the monthly or yearly care front, an occasional shampoo can cut down on soap scum buildup. You could also do a yearly borax sterilization if you’re feeling frisky.
I would say something like, “If you wouldn’t do it to your own hair...”, but brushes are not intended to be bleached, permed, colored, or heat treated. Just use them, clean them, and set them down in an open area to dry. Simple as that.
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Not much more to say. Brushes are fairly simple things. An inexpensive model is all you’ll ever need until it wears out, though you may find the pull of SBAD (“Shaving Brush Acquisition Disorder") to be stronger than heroin or cigarettes!
Shaving Perfection Part 1: The Problem
Shaving Perfection Part 2: Sharp Things
Shaving Perfection Part 3: Shaving Cream and Shaving Soap