Just a friendly reminder that this thread is for brushes. Anything else needs to go in a different thread in their appropriate forums such as Special Projects or Show and Tell.
When turn you brush remember to bore deeply enough in the knot receiver that you can make adjustments to the loft height of the knot. Give yourself a minimum of 25mm ..... you can alway add a filler when you set the knot.
I usually use pennies (namely the year I'm building to brush); it far cheaper and won't make it top heavy.
I would assume that would depend on the density of the wood you turn it in ..... remember modern US pennies are copper plated zinc so are very light.
I recently finished this acrylic brush with a Maggards 26mm SHD badger for a friend. View attachment 260175
I finally dusted off the lathe these past few weeks for the first time in quite some time. I had a nice chunk of burl. I have no idea what type of wood, but it was very dense. It was, however, very checked and had lots of voids. I cut it into 5 pieces and made forms to pour resin onto. I turned 3 of them. I made them round and then had to re-pour resin on new blanks due to the voids and cracks in the burl: The turning worked out well after that. The burl held together thanks to the resin, and I ended up with 3 brushes I am quite happy with. I'm keeping the Milk Churn homage and put an Omega Evo knot in it. The other two I am awaiting knots from APShave for: The resin is black with a bit of metallic copper coloured powder added as well.
I also made a beehive out of Redheart with a distressed edge on top for a TSD friend. An Omega boar completed it:
A Zebra and a Boar walked into my workshop and this is the brush that came out. This is a Zebra wood and boar hair knot bush for a good friend. He bought the wood and 3 knots and this is the second brush from the bunch. I'm not impressed with the knots but he likes them and that's what really matters. I hope he likes the handle.
I finally got inspired to make two shave brush handles for myself. Of the many shave brush handles I've made I've only kept four for myself. Two of which I no longer have. I've had two cow horns I acquired from a friend for quite a while. He butchered one of his cows and saved the whole head for me. I went over and removed the horns and cleaned them myself. Not the easiest process if you aren't used to that sort of thing. A horn handle brush has been high on my want list for a very long time so it was worth the effort. One thing I had to figure out was a way to make the top of the wood stepped to fit up inside the bottom of the horn. It was important to be sure that the seam would be as tight as possible. Everything worked out fantastically. I picked Cocobolo for the one on the right. I've used Cocobolo many times and it is one of my favorites. The base wood on left is Lignum Vitae, also called Guayacan or Iron wood which is know as the hardest wood in the world. This was my first time working with Lignum Vitae. It is definitely hard and even this piece I've had for many years had a fair amount of natural oils in it. I definitely look forward to using it more. Boar is most likely going into the left which is a little bigger diameter but shorter. Horse is the most likely candidate for the one on the right. So now that I've made two handles for myself I just need to make a final decision on those knots.
