Brush recommendations...

Tedolph when I load the brush I am splaying it into the soap and rapidly swirling. I loaded the Ethos unscented sample last night with my RR Bruce 24mm with my method and I had enough lather for my 3 passes and enough left for probably 1-2 more. I'm able to build a thick, dense lather in my Timeless bowl with the Ethos soap in less then 25 seconds - I do typically count and watch for when I hit what I call a "micro-bubble" stage and to where when I drop a dollop of lather into my sink water it holds together and doesn't separate.

During my first pass application I typically will dip the tip of my brush into the sink water several times to work into the lather on my face and keep it moist, especially during the winter when the humidity is lower.

Maybe I swirl and work up my lather with more gusto than most

I learned and adjusted my method based on recommendations from RayClem. This may not work with all soaps, but the soaps I'm using are generally thought of as top tier (Grooming Department, Ethos, Arianna & Evans, Barrister & Mann (have samples to try)).

Thanks for the detailed response.

My preferred brush has a mixture of horse and badger hair.  I have a 100% pure silvertip badger brush but find it too soft.  In fact, I even prefer synthetic brushes to the pure badger.  Is there something wrong with me?

I went with the APS G5C in Emerald handle. Using silicone, I initially set the knot all the way into the handle with a loft of 45mm. This was too short for painting and the splay was too resistant/springy. I removed the knot, cleaned out the silicone and added three 2.1mm spacers and got the loft up to around 52mm. Andrew's recommendation was 52-54mm.

The brush now performs great! Quick to build lather with Ethos Unscented, splay is easy on the face with just a little bit of scrub by the sides of the bristles to get my beard softened up and the painting side strokes are nice and soft while also releasing plenty of lather.

Compared to my Razorock Bruce 24mm, the tips are ever so slightly less soft, but I'm really splitting hairs here - literally.

I tried to steam the knot out of the Yaqi Surf. That didn't go well and sorta unsurprisingly, the collar portion of the handle twisted off due to the connecting plastic melting. I'm going to see if I can Dremel out the knot and then epoxy the collar back onto the bottom half of the handle and install the Pure Bliss SHD 22mm at as high a loft as I can get.

I've never had a Badger hair brush. With the experiences I've had with various boars and synths over the last 15 years of wet shaving, I can certainly say that the brushes I have now perform exceedingly well for me. As time goes on and the synthetic technology evolves maybe I'll revisit the market in the future, but for now I'm pretty happy with the G5C. Althought I wasn't really discontent with the RR Bruce, I just wanted to try something new and with a slightly longer handle for my bowl lathering.

I'm hoping the Pure Bliss also performs as well as it's been reviewed and maybe eats through slightly less soap

How do you remove the knot? I bought a vintage brush for the handle, but I don't know how to remove the knot.

ThResHypEr - please try using the forum Search function at the top of the site or search YouTube. There are dozens of threads and videos out there detailing the various methods of removing knots from vintage handles.

Beware of the boiling method with a "vintage" handle as it may destroy it. Better off cutting the hair flush and dremeling it out if you don't have a lathe.

Beware of the boiling method with a "vintage" handle as it may destroy it. Better off cutting the hair flush and dremeling it out if you don't have a lathe.

This... And better to send it to an artisan who can do it for you. I know this guy Timothy from Facebook who does awesome work with vintage handles.

Sent from my V2040 using Tapatalk

Beware of the boiling method with a "vintage" handle as it may destroy it. Better off cutting the hair flush and dremeling it out if you don't have a lathe.

This... And better to send it to an artisan who can do it for you. I know this guy Timothy from Facebook who does awesome work with vintage handles.

Sent from my V2040 using Tapatalk

Freddiep318ti here does amazing work too.

https://damnfineshave.com/thread-freddie...ush-thread

My favourite synthetic is a Stirling "Synthetic 2-Band Brush" - 24mm x 56mm
Good backbone and soft tips.



I particularly like the handle shape and Art Deco-ish appearance. Perfect grip for me.

From Stirling, it's $13.99 USD
I got mine from topofthechain.ca for $25 Canadian (= $18.39 USD).

They have them in ivory and green too.