Thanks I made all of them out of cypress wood. I carve them by hand and sand them down. I use 30 mm silver tip badger hair knots. So they are not expensive just a lot of time. One problem is I use green wood so some of the stand cracks but it does not hurt the function
No the slots where easy I bought a bench top drill press after selling some brushes and it is perfect to make the slots. Sometime I need to clean them up with a dremmel depending on the shape of the brush.
A storm downed some cypress trees near the house so I just cut off pieces as I need them and cut off the rotten wood to get to the good heart wood. Usually I cut the slices on a band saw and I spend lots of time sanding