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Anyone use horse hair brushes exclusively?

I have two horse hair brushes and I think they are excellent brushes. I often wonder why they are not more popular among wet shavers? They don't seem to get a lot of love.

Does anyone use horse hair exclusively or for the majority of your shaves?
 

IMightBeWrong

Loves a smelly brush
Agree with the above. Could hardly go 2-3 shaves without the hair tangling and needing to be combed out. Lots of hair shedding. My least favorite hair for a brush.
 
Never used one, never bought one. All the negative feedback swayed me away from ever considering one.
Too busy to be bothered with yet, another shaving gimmick. I know, I know... not really a gimmick.
 
use them, not exclusively nor as majority of shaves, but I enjoy them.

look for knot style as only a couple of companies make them and they have very different characteristics than just described above.
 
I have one and I love it, a Vie-Long BGS 2012 Butterscotch Beehive in Natural Horse. I'm a boar guy but I do love this horse, been using it the last couple of shaves and thinking about getting another after this GRUME is over.

Mine shed some when I first got it, but it stopped after a few shaves and hasn't lost a hair in years.
It smelled when I got it but not as much as my badger did.
It will tangle if I get too aggressive with my swirling, but nothing a comb out doesn't fix.
Mine has a loft of 55 mm, a knot of 25 mm and is not floppy at all.

I've heard that Zenith makes a nice horse hair brush also.
 
No, actually. For me:

1. Too floppy.
2. Too smelly.
3. Too tangly.

For me.
Ditto this.

Have owned two horse hair brushes, both Vie Long and both were unpleasant to use. Both were sacrificed in a knot swapping procedure. One died on the table and one is living happily with a synthetic transplant.

vielong milk synth.jpg
 
Yes but not exclusively. I have a Vielong and love it. Took me a while to learn how to use it but now that I have got the hang of it I use it about once a week.


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Yes but not exclusively. I have a Vielong and love it. Took me a while to learn how to use it but now that I have got the hang of it I use it about once a week.


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Yes, this is where I am as well. I have two horse hair brushes both Vie-long and I really like them very much. It does take a while to get the hang of them. But they are great lather-makers!
 
Got the Vie Long Cremo brush. Guess i just don't have that girly-soft, delicate & sensitive skin y'all have, since it works just fine for me.
 
I have two Vie-Long brown horse brushes, and I enjoy using them a lot. Trouble is I really really enjoy boar knots, so the horses don't get the love they deserve.

Are the horses floppy? Not at all, they're both 24mm knots at a relatively low loft of 50mm.

Do they tangle? That's a trick question. The answer for me is no, but I preemptively comb them out every time they're used. Yes, they would tangle otherwise because I like to do circles.

Do they smell? That's a stupid question. Like all natural hair brushes, they smell if they haven't been desmellified at the factory. An Oxy-Clean soak and a couple of lathers with pet shampoo and the smell is completely gone.

Are they scritchy? Yup, that's why I like them so much.

I'd take a good brown horse brush over any badger or synthetic.
 
I have one horsehair brush now. It is a Vie-Long chubby 24mm x 50mm 50/50 white fan shape. I like it and use it every week. Initially, it had a pretty bad barnyard odor, but that went away quickly. I don't find it scritchy, it's really pleasant to use; holds a lot of water. It doesn't get tangled, but I do comb it out every other use. The dense knot with low loft minimizes the tangling issue. It's strictly for face lathering.

I would like to get a larger Zenith horsehair brush at some point, probably sometime next year.
 
I find with horse hair, like any natural fiber, you need to treat it right. I like to swirl my brushes when I load and when l face lather. That's half the enjoyment of a horse brush. I don't mash down hard -- light pressure is all that is needed. I always make sure I rinse the brush well, dry strop it on a towel in painting motion, then let it air dry. I also comb it once in a while. No tangles, no knots, no problems.
 
I used a Vie-Long horsehair exclusively for a while. Has a shedding problem. From what I understand, Vie-Longs are not the best out there for horse hairs. I’m about to try a Shave Forge horsehair knot on a Whipped Dog handle. If I get the feel I got with the Vie-Long with better all-around quality, I’ll be a happy camper. While I’m waiting for the handle to arrive, I’m trying a Maggard two-band badger and…I dunno. Badger feels too much like a bunch of mush on my face. I’m giving it a week but so far I suspect I’ll be going back to exclusively horse.
 
I've never used anything "exclusively", but I do have a rotation for razors, blades, brushes and soaps that I loosely follow. I've found that certain brushes perform best with specific soaps, and it's getting complicated. An exclusive brush could definitely make life easier.
Badgers can be a ¢rapshoot, even if you select a more spendy one. Synthetics, even cheap ones can easily outperform other brushes regardless of cost. I got a Vie long Cremo Horsehair brush and it was impressive enough that I recently got a Vie Long "American" style long handle, primarily for the handle length, but it works great with a wide variety of soaps. The horse brushes made me want to revisit my only boar brush, a vintage Ever Ready 100T of my Grandfathers', that is easily 80 years old. it works well, and I now have a Semogue 1305 enroute to me, so I'll soon do a better comparison of boar vs horse to see if they perform measurably better than any of my badgers.
 
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