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Do some types of brushes shed more than others?

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.
 
Good question, ive had minor shedding from all natural types, badger, boar, and horse.

wonder if the density of knots plays more of a role than hair type.
 
The Vie that I've used a few times hasn't shed any. Synthies rarely ever shed any hairs. But naturals do shed, no matter what type. Some more, some less. Always depends on the single item.
 
Get yourself a Zenith horse extra soft brush. I haven't heard of a single one shedding. I don't remember mine loosing a single hair.

Horse brushes are way underrated by the way!
 
Update: The Shave Forge knot has seemingly stopped shedding. So who knows - maybe it was really hardcore in its breaking in. But past two shaves with it have been good with few, if any, hairs flaking out. Now on to the deodorizing.

If this holds up, my Maggards two-band badger brush will be going up for sale.

So, uh…as you were, I guess.
 
This was much worse than that. It was like two dozen hairs per shave for like the first two or three shaves. The Vie-Log was like five hairs per shave. The Shave Forge does seem to have settled down for now, tho, knock on wood.
 
I love horse hair brushes in general and my Zenith "traditional" in particular but it's been a shedder from day one .
I may try your "extra soft" .
 
I've chubby 3 and Saponificio Varensi badger brushes. The Chubby3 sheds about 10 hairs per day although not every day., the SV none. I still use the chubby as it is wonderful to use, in spite of the shedding.
Two similar brushes, but maybe the SV is put together better by a smaller company.
 
I don't have any experience with Vie-long brushes or horse hair ones, in general. However, I wouldn't judge the quality of the knot at hand based on the experience of the first few shaves. I'm glad the OP's brush seems to settle down.
 
After years of traditional wet-shaving and having owned a sizeable number of brushes with all kinds of hair, there seems to be sufficient evidence to me that
a) horse hair brushes are more likely to shed than boar or badger hair,
b) shaving brushes made by some (even very reputable) brands are more prone to shedding than other brands.

Some people will tell you that their horse hair brush does not shed, or that their brush of a brand that has a reputation for shedding has not lost a single hair, but what matters to me is not how an individual brush may perform (should I be lucky), but how I can combine the experience of others in order to minimize the risk to end up with a brush that will shed.

Searching the Internet it will become obvious that horse hair has more reports of shedding than their market share would suggest and that some brush manufacturers seem to turn out more shedders than others.

In my own experience, all my Vie-Long horse hair brushed shed (brown hair more so than white) and I had four Vulfix brushes, bought in the 1995-1997 time frame, that were all shedders.
Brushes that never seemed to shed were synthetics, like the Mühle Silvertip Fibre®, and brushes from Mühle, Semogue and Shavemac.


Hope this helps....



B.
 
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musicman1951

three-tu-tu, three-tu-tu
I have yet to own 20 brushes, so I don't know that my experience is universal, but I own 4 that I consider fairly expensive and non of these ever seem to shed a hair.

Somebody is going to respond that they use their grandfather's old $2 brush every day for years without shedding, so who knows?
 
I got a Vie-Long horse hair for Christmas several years back. It shed immensely from day one. It was so bad that I returned it. The replacement was much better, but still shed more than I thought it should. A couple of years later I decided it was time to replace it. (Obviously, I like how the brush performs.) I have only used this one a couple of times so far, but it has not shed a single hair yet.
 
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