Brush Chronicles #14: Omega B&B Essential Boar

[Haggises]

For a great lather, you don't need a 300 buck unicorn horn brush. You don't need to spend 50 smackers on a lemon cream from that shop in the mall or 70 euros on shipping a bowl of veggie delight from La Belle France.

You can get a great lather from your very modestly priced B&B boar and a little CO Bigelow/Proraso.


I added more water than I did at the weejwnd and was rewarded with an extra slickness and a great shave.

 

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Day 9: Omega B&B Essential Boar and Truefitt & Hill Grafton Cream or Look! There's an Alfred Sargent Shoe Store Down the Street!

The last stop in St. James is T&H, the last of the 3 T's and the equal of the other two. My experience with T&H products has been limited to this single tube of shaving cream, but I have been very impressed. Let's squeeze a snurdle of cream from the tube into the bowl:

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Again, we're not talking about much cream here at all. There was a thread posted yesterday about the necessity of soaking a brush before use, and I'm of the view that for a badger, a quick rinse under the tap is all you need, but I'm in the camp that believes boars should have a soak beforehand. Anyway, I squeezed the water from the knot, and began lathering in the bowl with the damp brush. The Grafton cream was in the middle of Harris and TOBS as far as water goes. I didn't get the immediate lather explosion and full bowl that TOBS delivered after 2 dips, but it also didn't take the 5-6 Harris required. All told, I'd say 3 trips to the basin and a little elbow grease gave me this lather:

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Pretty good, huh? Well the shave was as good as the lather looked, and I was BBS in two passes (don't try this at home, kids). These English creams can spoil a man. The ease of lathering, quality of the lather and the great, classic scents really do make traditional shaving enjoyable. Truth be told, I am not a real fan of the Grafton scent. It's too cologne-like and modern for me. I'll go with TOBS St. James, though, all day, every day if I had to. I will almost certainly make sure there is a tube of it around in the den. With the lathering ease these creams have delivered this week, the B&B Essential Boar is looking at me a little disdainfully, as if I'm not making it work very hard. Tomorrow, we'll do a face lather with a glycerin shave stick and see what it thinks then.

 

[jkh]

Oh man, this thread had me scouring Omega's website for another boar to replace my big old "wet noodle" also known as the Omega 10098:

View attachment 454718

According to the internetz the 10098 has knot size of 27mm and a loft of 65mm. I always wished that the 10098 had a loft height of 55mm because I think shortening the loft would remove the "wet noodle" sensation when using this brush.

Low and behold I discovered the Omega 10104, which according the internetz has a knot size of 27mm and a loft of (drumroll, please) 55mm! Added bonuses, I really like the handle shape, the retro green color, and it cost me like $7! I placed an order for this brush and will be interested to see if the specified dimensions I found online are correct or not.

Also, does anyone know if Omega has more than one grade of boar hair? I am curious if the boar hair in the non-professional brush (e.g., 10104) is the same as the professional brush (e.g., 10098)



Note: I had the badger hair version of the B&B Essential. It was a great brush however the handle was not comfortable for my big old paws, which is why I am not seeking out a B&B Essential Boar - even though they are obvious awesome and I love all of the different handle colors!

 

[jkh]

For a great lather, you don't need a 300 buck unicorn horn brush. You don't need to spend 50 smackers on a lemon cream from that shop in the mall or 70 euros on shipping a bowl of veggie delight from La Belle France.

You can get a great lather from your very modestly priced B&B boar and a little CO Bigelow/Proraso.

View attachment 454389
I added more water than I did at the weejwnd and was rewarded with an extra slickness and a great shave.

Oh please! You clearly used a Plisson HMW and XPEC shave cream to produce that lather. The lowly B&B Essential Boar was then plopped into this supposed scuttle full of "Proraso" lather just for the photo op

 

[Haggises]

Busted

 

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I thought that was an XPEC MdC superlather.

 

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Day 10: Omega B&B Essential Boar and QED Bathtub Gin Shave Stick or Stop knocking those glycerin soaps!

So far, we've lathered hard soaps on the face and in the bowl, and creams in the bowl. Today, we tackle a glycerin-based shave stick from QED in its Bathtub Gin fragrance. The juniper fragrance is fantastic:

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Lathering from shave sticks is different than other soaps, but in a nutshell, I wet the end of the stick prior to my shower, and then do a quick dip in the basin before rubbing the shave stick on my wet face. The raised stubble scrapes soap off the stick, and coats the beard. It can sometimes be hard to know just how much to load, but I generally keep applying until I can see a layer of soap on my face:

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During my shower, I soaked the Essential Boar in some water, and squeezed the knot to damp before going to work on a face lather. It can be easy to use too little water here, because the lather forms on your face so quickly, that you can build up a dry lather in no time. I will typically use the quantity and appearance of the lather in the brush as my guide to see if I need to keep going back to the sink for more water. In a face lathering, the brush should be just as full of lather as if you loaded from a puck and built it on your face. After a good bit of face lathering, it looked like this:

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What's more, the B&B Essential was filled with incredible lather:

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That particular lather may be the best one I made over the last two weeks. The lather itself was incredibly slick, rich and cushioning, and the scent was incredible. Charles from QED has always had a perfumer's touch when creating his scents and making his soaps, and the Bathtub Gin does not disappoint in the slightest. One item that should cross your mind is that this soap is not from one of the big houses, or from the current artisan ranks. It's not made with unicorn tallow, or based on an ancient French soap recipe. It is a glycerin soap, by definition a melt and pour soap that is so often derided. Take a look at that lather. It is as good as or better than any soap I've used in the last two weeks. I personally have not used glycerin-based soaps in so long that I had forgotten how good they can be. If you're curious, give QED's a try. Mama Bear makes a good one too. The best part, perhaps, of any glycerin soap is the diversity and intensity of the scents. You'll have no trouble finding a scent you like. For a face lathering, the B&B Essential Boar did a great job, and was very comfortable to use.

 

[rsp1202]

I missed out on getting the amber-colored and/or smoke transparent handle. Wish I hadn't.

 

[Bushhippi]

Another fantastic tutorial, and showing the usefulness of the B&B bore brush and it's ability to handle many different kinds of soaps ..........especially for a guy like me, new to face lathering and especially in using sticks. Thanks for the useful photos. ​

 

[Haggises]

Last night I lathered on the puck, a puck of unknown origin that Mark threw in.
The lather was thick and good but had a tendency to dry in a "crumbly" way.
So I added way too much water and worked it until it was just right.

 

[RobW]

Old photo, but had this same shave recently (the soap is DRH Marlborough).



The knot for the Essential is a great offering from Omega, but the handle is what makes this one of my favorite brushes. I guess I have smaller hands, but I find that hooking my ring finger under/around the "ring" above the base makes this really ergonomic. There are some tiny little bubbles in the resin, but these are great versatile little brushes!

 

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Day 11: Omega B&B Essential Boar and Saint Charles Shave Refined with Menthol or Damn, that smells good

For today's lather, I used my personal favorite artisan shave soap, SCS's Refined. The scent is fantastic, blending oakmoss, orange and lots of other good stuff. It is a very unique scent to me, and I like it a lot. This particular cake of soap also included menthol, so it had a nice cooling touch as well, though it wasn't as chilly as the Palmolive Refreshing cream was able to deliver. I have used many SCS soaps during my 3017 experience, and I've found that with 1 minute of loading, I can make the soap disappear in a matter of weeks. That is admittedly overkill, and I'm going to dial back on the loading going forward, so today I took my soaked and squeezed brush and loaded from the SCS soap (which had also been soaked during my shower) for about 30 seconds. The loaded brush looked like this:

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Yes, it's still probably overloaded, but you have to start somewhere. I face lathered, and spent about 2 minutes going back and forth between basin and face to build up a very nice, slick, aromatic lather. The loaded brush looked like this:

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See, I told you I overloaded. Anyway, the shave itself was the typical stellar experience I have with this soap, and I noticed that over two minutes of face lathering, the Essential Boar was really soft and scrubby, so the lathering experience was quite pleasant for me. After two passes, I had a DFS, and followed it up with a splash of SCS Lime AS (which also contains a modest hit of menthol).

 

[djh]

Absolutely on fire Gentlemen. Thanks for your work in this latest edition of the Brush Chronicles.

 

[InfernoOrangeSS]

Which colour works best?

For me personally, I would say the original blue and the red. Not because they are better than any other color, but because they just happen to be the two colors I use the most. They are the most broken in, but it is only by happenstance.

 

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Day 12 and Final: Omega B&B Essential Boar and Musgo Real Cream

With apologies for not posting this yesterday, my last day lathering the Essential Boar for this Chronicle was spent with Musgo Real Cream, which is, IMO, the best performing shaving cream available today. Easily lathered, it produces a slick, cushioning lather that holds up to even the dullest of cartridges. Let's start with a small dollop in the bowl:

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You know the drill by now, take soaked brush, squeeze, attack cream in bowl with damp brush, add water, swirl, swirl, swirl, repeat until done. Voíla:

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Admittedly, this is not the greatest looking lather, but it was an excellent performer. For the last couple of days, I've been testing out a Slim Adjustable, thinking that with the head being the same as the Fatboy (which works great for me), it'll be like falling off a log to get it to work well. Not so much. That thinner handle is throwing me for a bit of a loop, making it harder to get the angle right. I'm just as likely to get a scrape scrape scrape as I am a cut cut cut sensation. Anyway, the Musgo and its tremendous, classic scent more than did the job. So, frankly, did the Essential Boar. It has proven to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is a very versatile performer. Soaps and creams, bowls and sticks and tubs and tubes, face or bowl, this brush handled everything with aplomb. I'll have to get after that Captain Fawcett's to see what I can do with it. The very short break in time from the beginning was a nice surprise, and the pre-split tips made for a comfortable face feel from the first shave. I can't say that any of my other boars delivered that. The handle is very comfortable to use, and it combined with the loft of the knot allowed it to work just fine in a bowl. All in all, it's a great brush, and for $20, though not the cheapest boar in the pen, a good value.

Here ends the organized lathering shenanigans for Brush Chronicle #14. Please feel free to keep adding to this thread as the spirit moves you. We're going to take a week off before starting the next Chronicle. Keeping with the boar theme, our next subject will be the Semogue Owner's Club Boar.

 

[Haggises]

Great post as always Bob!

I used my TGN Silvertip last night, after 2 weeks worth (8-9 shaves) of using the B&B Boar.
Now I notice a little more prickle, a little more lather hogging, a little less soft scrubbiness.

Almost tempted to break in my son's who is steadfastly ignoring my subtle hints to start shaving with it.

 

[Jarick]

Used for today's shave with Pre de Provence.

After 20 seconds of loading:



After first pass:

 

[Jarick]

Got some Arko in today. Cheap thrills.

 

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That's good work by you.

 

[jkh]

Wowzers! Great chronicle gents!