Quick synopsis so far: I bought a Vie-Long horsehair brush. Great. After using a Semgouge boar and a Whipped Dog badger, I found out horsehair is the type of brush I really prefer. But after a few months the Vie Long starts to shed, like least half a dozen hairs per shave. No matter what I do - cleaning, going cold water, etc., it keeps shedding. So I figure maybe Vie Long has some poor QC or something. I buy a Shave Forge horsehair knot and a Whipped Dog handle and go back to badger while I wait for them to arrive.
New horsehair knot arrived yesterday and a siliconed it into the handle. First shave this morning and two things become immediately apparent. I very much prefer horsehair to badger. Call me nutty, but going back to horse after a week of badger just felt right. BUUUUUUT: This Shave Forge knot sheds even worse than the Vie Long. Literally a couple of dozen hairs out right at the start. I spent the first solid minute of the shave just plucking hairs out of the brush. More wound up on my face and the shave soap puck. It drove me nuts. At least with the Vie Long I got a solid number of months under its belt before it started shedding.
I never had a problem with shedding the boar brush I used. With the badgers, maybe one or two hairs here and there. But never, ever as bad as these two horsehair brushes. It makes me mad because I like the feel of horsehair much more than badger or boar, but I also don’t want to deal with spending time plucking hairs out of the brush, off my face and off the soap.
Do horsehair brushes just naturally shed more than others? Or do I have just bad luck with these first two I tried? I was thinking of going to the Zenith horse brushes, but yeesh, I don’t want to pay $50 for a brush that is just going to clog the drain.
New horsehair knot arrived yesterday and a siliconed it into the handle. First shave this morning and two things become immediately apparent. I very much prefer horsehair to badger. Call me nutty, but going back to horse after a week of badger just felt right. BUUUUUUT: This Shave Forge knot sheds even worse than the Vie Long. Literally a couple of dozen hairs out right at the start. I spent the first solid minute of the shave just plucking hairs out of the brush. More wound up on my face and the shave soap puck. It drove me nuts. At least with the Vie Long I got a solid number of months under its belt before it started shedding.
I never had a problem with shedding the boar brush I used. With the badgers, maybe one or two hairs here and there. But never, ever as bad as these two horsehair brushes. It makes me mad because I like the feel of horsehair much more than badger or boar, but I also don’t want to deal with spending time plucking hairs out of the brush, off my face and off the soap.
Do horsehair brushes just naturally shed more than others? Or do I have just bad luck with these first two I tried? I was thinking of going to the Zenith horse brushes, but yeesh, I don’t want to pay $50 for a brush that is just going to clog the drain.