Hello Gents, I have searched quite a bit for some advice on this topic but I haven't managed to come up with too much. Apologies in advance if I missed a previous post. I own several brushes which I fear have been trimmed during the manufacturing process and they are very prickly. Two of the brushes were not cheap either. One is an Omega Ovangkol badger, and the other is a heavy chrome Parker badger. I have read that if a hair has been cut, it will not develop split ends. I was wondering if anyone has had some luck with making the bristles less prickly. My brushes are especially annoying when I am first putting them against my skin. It feels like getting poked with a bunch of tiny needles. I have heard that some people have lightly sanded the hair tips or have pounded them with a hammer. I am willing to try just about anything. Any ideas? What say you, shaving experts? Thanks, Lyndon
I never had any luck making a badger softer that it was on arrival in my den. I do have a vie-long silvertip that has so much backbone it will poke you if you swirl lather on. If you paint with it it is very soft Can you return them or exchange them? If not sell them for what you can list them as scratchy so they will not be returned to you.
I have had the brushes for quite some time so I cannot return them. However, if I can't fix them I will probably just give them away on the Freebies forum.
Yeah, if they're badgers, they probably won't change a lot. I have a pure badger I use as a travel brush that does feel a bit prickly the first time I use it after sitting a while. After that it feels a little better on subsequent days. It's not bad enough that it irritates me or anything. If it did, I wouldn't use it. But it's the brush I wouldn't mind losing so I probably never will lose it
I am going to try each brush out for a stretch of 5 to 10 days to see if there is any improvement. If not I may start to really abuse the brushes to see if I can get the hairs to split. I just read an article intended for ladies entitled Ten things to do to avoid split ends. I plan on doing a lot of those things.
Try this. Pick a brush and get yourself a nice cereal bowl from the pantry. Whip yourself up a big fat bowl of lather for 30 days straight. Spend two minutes whipping and working the lather and "wipe on" and see if at the end your not satisfied with a face lather. I bet you will enjoy it but it might take another 30. Thus hobby is often considered an instant gratification deal where as our grandfathers would have bought a brush or razor and thought nothing of spending a month breaking it in.
Yeah, that's for sure. I always enjoy seeing those pics of the worn out dog-eared Ever-Ready brushes with barely an inch of bristles remaining! Man those suckers were used until there was almost nothing left. Today I was thinking about lathering up on a piece of black 400-grit sandpaper in an attempt to cause the trimmed bristles to split a bit. I don't mind a bit of backbone but these two brushes of mine give an uncomfortably sharp pricking sensation every time the brush reverses direction on my face. Thanks for the suggestion. I think I might actually put them in the shower where I can do both brushes at the same time.
Just got another idea... maybe lathering them with facial scrub. The kind that has the fine grit in it.
Yep, very true. With badger brushes, what comes out of the box is pretty much what you're stuck with. Maybe someone likes what you've got though and would be willing to trade?
The problem hairs in my opinion are not the normal badger hairs, they are hairs that I am sure have been clipped with scissors when shaping the brush. So I guess what I am really asking is... is it possible to get a clipped badger hair to split or fray at least a little? I believe that it must be possible, I just haven't figured out the best way to do it yet.
What grade badger were they sold as? If they're "pure badger," sometimes that can be fine, but sometimes it can just be really scratchy. But good luck trying to improve them somehow, it'll be interesting to follow along and hear how it goes.
If you don't like using it now, you can't make it much worse by trying something crazy. I kinda doubt there's much you can do other than re-knot it but what do you have to lose?
Hey everyone, thanks very much for the comments, much appreciated! Here is a photo of the two offending turkeys! Gotta say, I really do like the handles on these two brushes. The Omega with the ovangkol wood handle looks nice and is easy to grip. The Parker chrome handle looks great and is nice and heavy. The bristles on the Omega are terrible, and the Parker is only marginally better. I am very disappointed with both brushes as they were not cheap. Each brush cost about US $45.00. I am going to be focusing on the Omega brush first. I will be aggressively brushing the hairs with a hairbrush after shaving while the brush is still wet. Then I will blow dry the tips using a very high heat. Then after the brush is dry, I will aggressively brush the tips again. I have inspected the tips under a 20x loupe and I have indeed seen that some of the tips are beginning to split. However, unlike a board brush the split ends are quite short. Maybe just a millimeter or so from the end. I will keep at it to see what happens. I have quite a few other "pure" or "best" badger brushes which are in no way as bad as these two dogs!
Thanks Sara. I wish I could have a small room that I could use as a small shop. Unfortunately, I am currently living in a moderately sized apartment. The Omega brush with Ovangkol wood handle is available with different knots so I may end up just purchasing the same brush with the HI-BRUSH synthetic bristles. If I do, you will be seeing this one in the PIF section!
