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About brush sizes...

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My YAQI Sagrada Familia 2 band badger arrived today from MSC/YAQI South Africa (together with a tub of MSC (mentholated) Peppermint/Lime shaving soap + splash!). There's two reasons why I got myself this brush: to know how well a small brush like this performs and to know how much better a badger is than anything else without braking the bank.
When I opened the box, the diminutive size of the brush just struck me. Quite cute I must say ;-)
I face-lather for 99.9% of my shaves and the small size is definitely a win when it comes to controlling where you want your lather to go! Very handy tool! I always wanted to get myself a Semogue 1305 but hesitated because of the small size. That, I know now, is not an issue. On the contrary...
When it comes to softness, I guess badger sits between boar and synth. Still, when loaded with lather there's not much difference anymore...

I thought it was interesting to line my brushes up to visually compare the sizes (from left to right, handle height-knot height-knot diamter (mm)):
1. OMEGA Jade (boar) 58-52-27
2. YAQI Sagrada Familia (badger) 47-50-22
3. YAQI Atlantis (synth) 65-55-24
4. YAQI Rocks (synth) 62-57-28
5. YAQI Ocean (synth) 67-57-28
6. OUMO Exceed Vitality (5G synth) 62-52-30

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I've got a Jade boar coming from Connaught. I used to like smaller brushes but tend to prefer my medium and medium large ones these days.
 
When I opened the box, the diminutive size of the brush just struck me. Quite cute I must say ;-)
I face-lather for 99.9% of my shaves and the small size is definitely a win when it comes to controlling where you want your lather to go! Very handy tool!

I thought it was interesting to line my brushes up to visually compare the sizes (from left to right, handle height-knot height-knot diamter (mm)):
1. OMEGA Jade (boar) 58-52-27
2. YAQI Sagrada Familia (badger) 47-50-22
3. YAQI Atlantis (synth) 65-55-24
4. YAQI Rocks (synth) 62-57-28
5. YAQI Ocean (synth) 67-57-28
6. OUMO Exceed Vitality (5G synth) 62-52-30

Quite a wide range. 👍

Looking at my own brush range, I used to concentrate on 26 mm brushes, but that sweet spot moved about two years ago towards 24 mm, and last month two 22 mm brushes came back from Shavemac. I had loved their ergonomic handles, but the hairs had been reaching the end of their useful lives after more than 15 years of use, and I had them re-knotted with D01 and D01 Two-band Silvertip hair.

22 mm and larger than 26 mm were outliers in my collection, but I really do enjoy the two 22 mm Shavemacs that just came back. They were actually not the first 22 mm brushes that I turned my attention back on to. In spring of this year I bought two Danidom boar brushes in that size, which also work very well for me.

Reading various posts, it seems that many prefer larger brushes, but - as you just mentioned - smaller brushes give added precision and as I load my brush for every pass (2) except the final touch-up, lack of lather generating capability has never been an issue for me with the 22 mm size.


B.
 

Ron R

I survived a lathey foreman
View attachment 1509991

My YAQI Sagrada Familia 2 band badger arrived today from MSC/YAQI South Africa (together with a tub of MSC (mentholated) Peppermint/Lime shaving soap + splash!). There's two reasons why I got myself this brush: to know how well a small brush like this performs and to know how much better a badger is than anything else without braking the bank.
When I opened the box, the diminutive size of the brush just struck me. Quite cute I must say ;-)
I face-lather for 99.9% of my shaves and the small size is definitely a win when it comes to controlling where you want your lather to go! Very handy tool! I always wanted to get myself a Semogue 1305 but hesitated because of the small size. That, I know now, is not an issue. On the contrary...
When it comes to softness, I guess badger sits between boar and synth. Still, when loaded with lather there's not much difference anymore...

I thought it was interesting to line my brushes up to visually compare the sizes (from left to right, handle height-knot height-knot diamter (mm)):
1. OMEGA Jade (boar) 58-52-27
2. YAQI Sagrada Familia (badger) 47-50-22
3. YAQI Atlantis (synth) 65-55-24
4. YAQI Rocks (synth) 62-57-28
5. YAQI Ocean (synth) 67-57-28
6. OUMO Exceed Vitality (5G synth) 62-52-30

View attachment 1509988
That little Yaqi Sagrada Familia 22mm 2 band badger is a great brush and that was interesting review that I enjoyed reading. I think once people read some of these threads they would just go and buy one. I bought mine on the live sale and I'm very pleased with quality also. The Yaqi space Galaxy silvertip is a nice brush in the 24mm, very heavenly soft tips with good splay gentle scrub and not a lather hog either.
 
I've received the Connaught Jade boar and I'm finding, that, my new Semogue SOC Taj boar, and the Pro Pro, all of which are larger than I'd been used to, are suiting me just fine. It's fun to have some brushes so completely different from the mostly higher quality badger hair brushes I've been using some time now. I used to find my Kent BK-8 almost comically large (of course, with it's Silvertip knot, it has a wider bloom than the boars but it's in the same size range as the Jade and SOC and only slightly smaller than the Pro Pro. I don't know about the width of the knots at the base, just looking and heights of the bases and knots for the most part. Anyway, I'm living in my Golden Age of shaving right now!
 
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