Dry Brush Before Reuse - Fact or Myth?

I'll wade in  Its not always useful to look at what our fathers and grandfathers did as the gold standard.  Most of them smoked, many drank too much, none of them ever used a seat belt in a car (if there even was one), it never occurred to them to use a helmet in cycling, hockey, football or even motorcycling and they didn't even know what dental floss was.  The result was lots of them died early, lost teeth, got maimed and so forth.  And lets not forget the depression, they were not about to indulge themselves in the sinful acquisition of superfluous possessions.  One shaving brush, preferably the cheapest one they could find would do them just fine until it no longer was able to perform its intended function.  Don't take this as a criticism or judgement of our fathers'/grandfathers' generation, they did the best they could with what they had and what they knew and they did pretty darn well.

My dad's shaving kit was a testament to frugality.  I don't remember ever seeing the handle to his shaving brush, the knot had fallen out and he discarded the handle and used just the knot - the hair was stuck into a plastic disc.  His soap was a really gross bar of baby soap in a plastic travel soap container - I don't recall ever seeing a fresh bar of soap in there so a bar must have lasted years.  I think he used a fatboy or a slim, can't remember but I'm pretty sure it was barely functional.  My point is, I look at my father's shaving kit as a worst case scenario of things to avoid doing rather than" if it was good enough for him its good enough for me".

With respect to drying brushes between uses, ideally its probably a good idea.  You may not see the effects right away but I suspect if you do the drying you'll have greater brush longevity than if you don't.  The only way to really know is to get two identical brushes and keep one wet and one dry between shaves and see if there's any apparent difference over the years.  I learned in the military, take care of your gear and it'll take care of you.  That and even though you don't want your combat boots to be shiny, they should still be clean and well maintained.

In a way, Mark, that's comparing apples to oranges because if one brush is allowed to dry completely before being reused it will not be used nearly as much as the brush that is used even though it may still be wet or damp.

For the sake of scientific accuracy, this is not necessarily true. It would be possible to have the "wet brush" simply soaked each morning to the same degree that one would use it, but not actually use the brush, thereby allowing an equal number of uses between the 2 brushes.

As a control, for the sake of true scientific pursuit, you would ideally have 4 of the same brush; 2 kept wet, 1 used, and 2 kept dry, 1 used.  The 2 being used would be used the same number of times within the scope of the experiment, and the 2 being unused yet stored wet and dry would serve as focus controls...

But that might be taking things a little too far...

Chris, in my mind, it would not be accurate to keep one brush wet but not used and one dry but not used.  To get a true perspective, the brushes would have to be used as they ordinarily would be otherwise the experimant is pointless.  In that case, I still maintain the brush that is allowed to dry completely would not be used nearly as often as the one that isn't, especially in a humid atmosphere.  In a very dry atmosphere, such as an air-conditioned room which will lower humidity quite a bit, the whole thing may be a moot point.  Just my 2¢.

Freddy the unused brushes would be there only as a comparison point. You compare the used, wet brush to the unused wet brush, and the used, dry brush to the unused dry brush for a base comparison of what happens to a brush when it is used. Then you compare the wet used to the dry used for an analysis of which suffers more "damage" during the experiment.

It would serve only as a baseline comparison to see what damage is being caused by use and what is being caused by moisture. If the unused wet brush that has been consistently wet shows signs of wear or damage that are not present in the dry unused brush, we can surmise the damage to be from water only...

Yeah well, I'm just going to keep on letting my brushes dry between uses. Things dry pretty readily here in southern Alberta on the Eastern slopes of the Rockies including skin, lips, eyes, etc. I will rinse out a brush, strop it "dry" on a towel and hang it bristles down for most of the day. When I return later in the day I'll stand it on its end and its always dry as a bone by morning. The Simpson Chubby and some other similar brushes with large densely packed knots take a little longer to dry but they are still dry by morning.