Heavily scented soaps and natural bristle brushes

[Sam Hanwich]

I'm fairly new here and at first I just had one soap, Mitchell's Wool Fat, and one razor (DE89) and one brush. Life was so easy before I fell into the rabbit hole

So now I am starting to try a few different shave soap samples with a wide range of scent types. A few soap samples I received have a really strong scent that lingers on the brush even after several rinses. I was just wondering if people have multiple brushes and try to keep the same scent theme with a particular brush or do you just take your brush that still smells of yesterday's citrus soap and load it up with today's tobacco scent and then load it up tomorrow with barbershop and so on until the brush just smells like a total mashup of every scent under the sun?

 

[Ron R]

Welcome to B&B, as for having a brush for each scent or soap I do not go by that method. I like variety and pick a different brush for each shave randomly and it seems to work. I like to use natural hair brushes and synthetic brushes. I do have one brush(dedicated) I use for cleaning my whole face with the same soap for the last 4 years and that is a Yaqi 24mm Cashmere synthetic brush because it is fast drying and is soft when cleaning around my eye area's. My advice is use what you want and just enjoy the few minutes with using the brush for lathering (A Zen moment some refer to).

 

[rbscebu]

The perfect soap scent for me is the scent of my brush. This is a combination of the scent of every soap that it has lathered.

Surely I am not the only one who enjoys smelling his shaving brush before each shave.

 

[NorthernSoul]

Just rinse your brushes out as best you can. It's just too fiddly to worry about mixing residual scents of shaving soaps, IMHO. Or use mildly scented soaps, and neatly sidestep around the issue.

 

[Asland408]

I am definitely in the mix your soap on which ever brush you choose camp. However, I used to buy vintage shaving brushes and on occasion the scent they had was too strong for me or my taste. So two things I did to remedy this were to: 1. soak the brush in hydrogen Peroxide for hours or days this will help remove odors (be warned this may cause bleaching or whitening of the brush hairs or fibers. 2. The second thing I would do is use a strong natural soap scent I liked like ivory liquid and wash the brush several times. I hope this is helpful.

 

[Sam Hanwich]

The perfect soap scent for me is the scent of my brush. This is a combination of the scent of every soap that it has lathered.

Surely I am not the only one who enjoys smelling his shaving brush before each shave.

You are definitely not the only one

Thanks for setting my mind at ease. My brush is starting down the road of maturity and each morning we will look back and celebrate all the soaps it has lathered!

 

[SharpieB]

I use some stinky soaps, and never had an issue with residual stank. Not something even remotely on my radar.

 

[Mr. Shavington]

I am with @rbscebu on this. I love the way my brushes smell with whatever mixture of soap ghosts they happen to have.

If I used Arko I’m sure I’d have to dedicate a brush for it, so that my other brushes don’t gain a public urinal overtone. But I don’t use Arko.