First restore-a question about the drilling depth

[Mr. O]

Hello all. My wonderful swmbo bought me a nice Ever Ready vintage butterscotch brush ! It looked like the knot was horse hair. What I've done so far was cut as much hair out as possible and am in the process of using my dremel to get the rest out. It appears the knot may have been attached with either rubber or a black glue. I'm leaning towards glue. My question, when do I stop drilling? Or put another way, is there a sure tell sign when all the previous stuff is out? Are these handles hollow? The inner sides near the top are butterscotch while you can tell where the substance was that held the know. The area is black. I realize it's probably hard to diagnose without pics. I'll try and get some up tomorrow.

 

[Angry__Panda]

The black is probably burnt hair heh. That is what happened to me. The hair burned and melted...Smelled DELICIOUS! Anyways look at the sides of where the knot was, is is a particular color? For me the sides were white once I could see them, I drilled until I found the white part. If you end up going to deep, it isn't the end of the world, you can use other stuff to fill it in; epoxy, washers, money, etc. Obviously choose whatever will make the weight right for you. For this I used like a routing bit for the Dremel; this one. It will cut pretty fast though so you have to be careful.

 

[Kentos]

In my experience the glue part of the knot is pretty small, maybe 3/8th of an inch or less. Like Panda said, the shelf upon which the knot sits on is usually a white plaster or sumthin.
I just drill the whole thing out and fill the cavity with two 5/8 bolts for weight, built up with wine cork and set in epoxy...you can use gold nuggets if you want ...but I prefer a heavier handle.

 

[Hex]

I had some of that black stuff and it was old glue. I drilled it all out and filled the handle with cork and epoxy.

I want to caution you to wrap the handle well with many layers of masking tape so as to prevent scratching it.

good luck