A few months ago, I bought one of those Bethlehem olive wood brush handles from eBay. The handle was beautiful, but I didn't think the finish would hold up, it was just a thin coat of varnish. So I sanded it down to bare wood and then applied several hand rubbed coats of Tru Oil linseed oil finish. Fine sanding and running with a polish have me a great durable satiny finish. As for the knot, I decided on a 24mm TGN finest F2. My experience with badger brushes has not been great, and I have come to favor synthetics or boar. I didn't have a badger at the time, so I decided to give it another try. The result looked great! Unfortunately, I just didn't like the knot. Badger brushes have always made my face feel itchy, and this one did, too. I didn't enjoy using it. After putting so much effort into the handle, I wanted a knot that I would really like. My favorite synthetic is the Beauty Strokes H.I.S. brush. I have three of them, one in the original handle and two that were re-handled by The brush maker Oscar11. I decided to get one of the smaller 24mm H.I.S. brushes, extract the knot, and put it into the olive wood handle. I didn't think to take a photo of the donor brush, but it is just a slightly smaller version of the big 28mm H.I.S. brush. To get the knot out, first I protected it by binding it up tightly with string, then wrapped it in several layers of blue painters tape. I locked the handle securely in a vise. I ground down the hard black plastic with a Dremel tool and various cutting and grinding bits. Once I got down to the metal ring around the base of the knot, I cut the knot free from the base of the handle with a hack saw. A little touch up with the grinder gave me a nice clean knot. Now, I had to remove the badger knot. I read about using stream to soften the epoxy glue, but I feared that would damage the wood handle. So, I played it safe and extracted it the hard way. I cut the hair down with scissors, then used the Dremel to getting it out. What a mess! It was almost as messy as extracting the knot from the H.I.S. brush! Once the handle was clean, I gave the interior two new costs of the Tru Oil to seal it before gluing in the H.I.S. knot. I am very pleased with how it turned out. I love how the knot performs and how it feels on my face.
The finished brush is just beautiful! Have you ever tried a TGN synthetic, they are my favorite by far.
Looks very very nice. I have this one home too. I have an idea for what my knot will be, but that will be a secret till everything is spoken and safe.
The Plisson synthetic is great--I use mine regularly. I haven't measured it, but it seems a fair bit smaller than the 25mm bore of the olive wood handle, so you might want to double check.
Good work. Of all the Gen 4 fibers I still think the H.I.S. is the best overall of the bunch and that is saying something given the competition. BTW: The H.I.S. no longer comes with the big 28 mm knot. Beauty Strokes / FM Brush moved down to a 26 mm as their largest current offering, more than likely as a cost saving measure.
This is a good example of why I prefer to use silicone adhesive instead of epoxy, it's much easier to remove the knot without destroying it in order to transplant or replace it.
