Custom Shavemac Brush -- The Badger to Go with the Blade

I have been very happy with my two Shavemacs, great purschase!! Bernd also gives excellent service.

After a brief try about fifteen years earlier, I reacquainted myself with wetshaving in the Spring of 2006.

Though I became an early SCAD casualty, I managed to restrain myself from leaping headlong into the world of high-end brushes, sticking for more than 18 months with the boar-bristle brush from Kingsley pictured with the Shavemac. This happened in part because reading reviews and surfing online merchants' sites kept me interested and gave me a sense of the great variety of options available. At the same time, I wanted to avoid too many "learning experiences" with three-digit price tags.

Having read many positive reviews of the great combination of craftsmanship and attentive service provided by Bernd Blos at Shavemac, I sent him an E-mail. I knew from the outset that I really wanted a particular brush with a blue handle (No. 22357) that matched the glaze on my Moss Scuttle--see Hammer's "Shave of the Day" for 15 January 2008. However, I wanted a knot of bristles larger than the 21mm featured in the stock item, and I hadn't yet settled on a bristle grade.

Bernd answered my repeated queries with patience and very little waiting on my part. Following several rounds of E-mail, I ordered a brush with blue/chrome handle and a 23 mm knot of Finest Badger bristles. I liked the "scrubbing" effect that my boar-bristle brush had provided, and I knew that practically any grade of badger bristles would mark a major step up from the boar bristles: With these considerations in mind--not to mention sensitivity to cost--I figured that I'd wait to go all-out with a Silvertip knot. The brush made it across the Atlantic promptly and excellent condition, all told for less than US $115.

Now that I've picked-up this well-made tool, and used it with both cream and soap, I don't think I'll ever go without at least one badger in my kit again. It took some time to have an intuitive sense of how the badger bristles' high degree of water retention affects lathering. But with just a bit of practice, whipping-up a dab of cream or say 15 strokes of the brush on my soap cake produced enough high-quality lather to ace the "arm test," as seen in other reviews, with no trouble. In weeks of shaves with the brush, I can count the number of lost bristles on one hand, and holding the brush in my hand has impressed me with its heft and substance just the way I thought it would when checking-out the website.

One final tip--to excuse a bad pun: As other B&Bers have recommended, I washed the bristles for a few minutes with regular shampoo before my shave first shave. This really does eliminate the gamey smell common to new badger-bristle knots, and helps the bristles to "bloom" into a full, soft arrangement.

Count this reviewer as another fan of Shavemac: In all likelihood, I'll find myself in the market for a Silvertip brush from Kent or Rooney or Plisson someday. But with one Shavemac tool in my kit already, I won't pull the trigger on one of these brushes without seeing what Bernd Blos has on offer.