When people come and ask how simple it is to replace a knot in an vintage brush many will jump in and state that every replacement goes well, it is easy as pie and so on. Well, there is one thing I say to that, come in to the real world. There are many real world issues that affect vintage brushes. Remember that many of these items are well over 50 and some up to 100 years old and they were meant to serve a single life use and not be restored decades later. Materials such as wood, Catalin, Bakelite and more modern Thermoplastics have obviously aged. With this aging, both deterioration and fatigue sets in. Some can be easily seen some cannot. In addition to age and fatigue, some makers even used different internal designs and the brushes on the outside looked alike. Some of these changes were made to reduce cost and some were made due to issues with prior production methods. Either to improve a flaw, or to make assembly easier. In both cases these flaws and issues may not be readily identified if they are internal to the handle and cannot be detected by visual inspection or by handling inspection. Case in point, I had recently obtained two Lord Chesterfield two piece handled brushes. One had a white top and a butterscotch bottom and the other had a black top and a butterscotch bottom. They looked alike on the outside except for the color. Both brushes had Generation 1 Nylon knots. The first one that I restored can be seen in the following thread. http://theshaveden.com/forums/threads/lord-chesterfield-by-gdcarrington.34058/ The next one turned out quite differently. In this brush the top part of the handle had no hole. The knot set on a shelf that was integral or seamless with the top part of the handle. So when the bit was applied to remove the knot, the hidden shelf cracked and carried that crack along the top part of the handle. Now here is a before and after image. The first brush (white over butterscotch) had a thick top and a true hole and cavity existed that was filled with both the knot and fill material. The second brush (black over butterscotch) had a thin top which had no open hole and no fill material. The knot rode on top of the uni-body top section of the handle. Any major disturbance of the knot was going to break the top part of the handle. So when I came along drilling out a pilot hole, the entire top section cracked. Now at this point someone might bring up the steam method, but since the walls of the handle were thin and the knot was merely epoxied on the top, the heat would have distorted this miserably. The reason why I am posting this is not to "scare off" people from restoring brushes. It is quite the opposite. Why I am posting this is to show that the restoration of brushes brings a sense of fulfillment in bringing an antique or even a more modern brush back to a level of quality that can serve for years to come. However, you must take the bad with the good and if you restore enough brushes, you will run across design flaws, age and fatigue, and simply some brushes that were not constructed well in the first place. The great majority of brushes can be restored with little to no issues at all, however, I think it is important that if you are busy showing off your successes, you should also show your failures to provide a true and balanced view. So if you find a person who states they restore brushes and have never had a failure, either they have not restored a large enough quantity to incur one, or they are merely stating only one side of the story. Thanks for reading. P.S. I want to make it clear that this posting is not meant to be directed at any individual but is a general statement only.
I.....want to try. Well it does happen though, I would imagine. I've restored other things that weren't brushes and know how finicky things can be regardless of how good they seem on the outside.
Now I was working with ones that had much less information online because they were not very prevalent to begin with. Look on the forum listings under restorations and those that have a lot of successful stories are the ones you should go after to start with.
It's reassuring, in a way, to know even a master of brush restoration has the occasional failure. I recently found an ER H40 at an antique store that had been used a lot and wasn't in the greatest shape, but was only $4, so it was well worth the money to try to salvage it. When I was working on removing the last bits of glue it cracked along the side. It was strange because I wasn't really putting a lot of stress on the handle, but it bothered me thinking I had done something wrong. I chalked it up to being an internal flaw that wasn't visible, maybe from being dropped sometime or just age.
Sometimes it comes in just too small of a brush to begin with. A gentleman in the U.K. had purchased a Rubberset brush and he wanted me to restore it since he had seen other restores. I reminded him of the risks and well as the rewards and he said this is a small brush but it had the knot cut off and it was worthless in the condition it was in so he sent it over. Well, the knot was even smaller than 16 mm. So I showed him this photo of an attempted plan but stated that if this worked it would be more fortune than skill. Well again, we agreed to proceed and so I got my Dremel and made a small pilot hole and then got the small sanding drum and went to work. I had the hole expanded and while doing so, unknown to me a metal ring was receiving stress and maybe even heating up. Suddenly here is what happened. So both the owner and I were disappointed in the outcome, but he understood the risk and hoped for the reward. He is now searching for a larger Rubberset but he stated he wanted the right look (more than likely similar to this one) to try again. It is a good thing to document your "failures" well so that you can review and learn from them.
I can sympathize but you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet and you've made some pretty tasty looking omelets, Gary. Sorry it turned out like that. I know I've screwed up my share of handles.
Gary Thanks for posting not only this thread but all your examples. As a relatively new guy here, I have really enjoyed your posts and have even purchased a couple of brushes to try and restore myself. I have a favor to ask of you...just looking for you to spread a little bit more of your knowledge. I am attaching pictures of an ever ready 100 and an ever ready 200T. My first question is drill or steam. Next question is when polishing micromesh or semichrome. Lastly when determing what size of knot to use how do you measure the inside of the handle do you use a caliper or a ruler or just eyeball it? Thanks for your time. Please feel free to not answer any or all of these if they would be too in depth to answer here.
Steam, no and I will show you why for older Thermoplastics, Bakelites, Catalin and Wood you don't want to go that route. http://theshaveden.com/forums/threads/win-some-and-lose-some-restoration-story.28372/ Modern acrylics are fine if the knot was glued in and not epoxied. Heat will not be great enough with steam to affect most epoxies. Measurement by caliper. Measure twice epoxy once.
