Material of Simpsons brushes
- Thread starter Vanille
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EclipseRedRing
I smell like a Christmas pudding
I believe the handle is a synthetic resin as are the vast majority of modern Simpson brushes with some rare exceptions. Apparently they are lathe turned by hand but exactly what that means is not clear, to me at least. I am no expert so others will be able to confirm or correct this.
I’ve also read that are hand turned on a lathe. Not sure what they are made of though. They look nice and feel great in hand. Glad to hear you made Santa’s nice list.
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- #4
They used to be uniquely turned on a lathe by hand, but now I think they made on automated lathes.
That would be a surprise by me, I think the handles are hand turned except for the new Trafalgar line.
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There wouldn't be small differences between those handles if they were hand turned?
EclipseRedRing
I smell like a Christmas pudding
That was once the case, you can see variances in vintage Simpson brushes and some with visible hand tool marks. It probably comes down to the exact meaning of 'hand turned'. To me the cheapest handles are cast in moulds in large numbers. Better handles are turned in an automated lathe, that is controlled by an operator who does not individually shape each handle. They simply load the rods, program the lathe, and remove the finished handles. Finally, at the top end, a craftsman will load a single handle sized rod into a lathe and manually create an individual handle forming the shape by eye using hand tools. It is self evident that the last method will produce slight variation in shapes not present in the other two methods. For me, the last method is 'hand turned' and the other two are not. I suspect that Simpson handles are created using automated lathes and this is being described as 'hand turned' but I am happy to be corrected. Given the number of handles produced by Simpson it seems the only practical way to achieve their production numbers.
Yes, you are right. I had/have a couple of old Simpson brushes, and one still see very faint lines form turning and sanding. These are the ones that were hand turned and I see very much the same effect on my hand turned handle. Most bigger companies use automated lathes. There was a video I saw some years ago, it showed the loading of the resin rod into a machine and in the end handles came out.
I did make a quite a few of B&B LE brushes, the biggest number was 100 - 2012 Keyhole. All the handles were turned one by one by hand on a wood lathe without any copying attachment. I just had a few calipers set up with certain measurements - length of the lower part, diameter in the middle etc. It takes quite a while to make 100 handles this way. Before I made Chubby style, and for this I had made me a simple template from plywood - sometimes called a memory stick - where I had marked the total length, and the distance where the cut is to be made for the step.
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Great explanation!! Thanks!
In the olden days, Simpsons also used ivory (beautiful but not PC today).
I call on several machine shops that have CNC (computer numerically controlled) lathes and mills. The level of automation available is astounding and their capabilities continue to expand and improve.
Many of the CNC lathes have a bar feeder that feeds bar stock, often 6' and longer, automatically through the chuck of the lathe. The lathe creates the part and then parts it off so it falls into a bin. Part of the advanced machining today is to use whatever tooling is needed (different cutting tools are automatically changed as programmed) so that minimum if any additional processing is need for deburing and polishing.
Without bar feeders an operator needs to load each blank. I wonder if anyone provides 6' long resin turning blanks suitable for making shaving brush handles.
Even without a bar feeder speed and consistency is much improved over using a manual lathe.
Just in general production terms, CNC lathes and mills can make parts that couldn't even be attempted with manual lathes and mills.
Many of the CNC lathes have a bar feeder that feeds bar stock, often 6' and longer, automatically through the chuck of the lathe. The lathe creates the part and then parts it off so it falls into a bin. Part of the advanced machining today is to use whatever tooling is needed (different cutting tools are automatically changed as programmed) so that minimum if any additional processing is need for deburing and polishing.
Without bar feeders an operator needs to load each blank. I wonder if anyone provides 6' long resin turning blanks suitable for making shaving brush handles.
Even without a bar feeder speed and consistency is much improved over using a manual lathe.
Just in general production terms, CNC lathes and mills can make parts that couldn't even be attempted with manual lathes and mills.
It's not a matter of not being PC, it's not any kind of C. There are not enough elephants in the world to justify hunting them toward extinction to make trinkets. And I say this as someone who plays the piano. Ivory is nice but not justifiable for any purpose in a world with materials science advanced as far as it is.
Yeah, someone needs to figure out how to grow ivory in a lab. Then everyone could be happy!
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- #16
What follows below in italics is from an interview Mark Watterson gave in July of 2012.
Question:
Can you give us a look behind the curtain perhaps and tell us what goes into making a brush? How long does the process take from start to finish and how much is done by hand?
Answer:
The brush handles are in the main cut from Polyester plastic rod, machine turned on CNC lathes.
The handles are vibrated in wet Limestone chippings for a minimum of 8 hours for de-burring.
They are left to dry overnight before spending another 8 hours in polishing drums with wax covered wood chippings.
The handles are then engraved using lasering.
The badger hair is bought in one kilo ‘rolls’.
This is sorted and weighed (on traditional brass scales) according to the brush type and knot.
The knot is tied and formed (bundled) using plastic or wooden cannons.
The knot is then set or glued to ensure each hair has a sufficient bond and then re-tied further down the shaft.
The knot is then cemented into the handle.
The head would then be ‘twiddled’and combed to remove lose or short hairs.
The handles are then given a paint and the famous Simpson sticker is applied.
Packed and ready to ship …
All in all, each brush would take around a week to produce.
Some of the handles in current production are turned from acrylic rod as well.
Question:
Can you give us a look behind the curtain perhaps and tell us what goes into making a brush? How long does the process take from start to finish and how much is done by hand?
Answer:
The brush handles are in the main cut from Polyester plastic rod, machine turned on CNC lathes.
The handles are vibrated in wet Limestone chippings for a minimum of 8 hours for de-burring.
They are left to dry overnight before spending another 8 hours in polishing drums with wax covered wood chippings.
The handles are then engraved using lasering.
The badger hair is bought in one kilo ‘rolls’.
This is sorted and weighed (on traditional brass scales) according to the brush type and knot.
The knot is tied and formed (bundled) using plastic or wooden cannons.
The knot is then set or glued to ensure each hair has a sufficient bond and then re-tied further down the shaft.
The knot is then cemented into the handle.
The head would then be ‘twiddled’and combed to remove lose or short hairs.
The handles are then given a paint and the famous Simpson sticker is applied.
Packed and ready to ship …
All in all, each brush would take around a week to produce.
Some of the handles in current production are turned from acrylic rod as well.
EclipseRedRing
I smell like a Christmas pudding
What is meant by "The handles are then given a paint "? With what are they painted and why after the knot has been fixed?
I'd guess the laser engraving is painted. We do that before setting knots.
I recently saw a documentation about a guy who bought a piece of land somewhere in Namibia IIRC, all animals gone, vegitation a desaster. Within 20 years he rebuild a private animal refuge with lots of all kinds of animals. All ranchers, workers are local people. There is also a herd of elephants, some of them do have to be killed from time to time not to endanger the systems vegetation survival. Basically to keep an artificial balance, to keep the small ecosystem sustainable to use the buzzword. He can't sell the ivory anyway.
The same documentation also pointed out that a lot of northern hemisphere animal protection NGO's collects lots of money from donations by promoting the ivory ban and telling countries in Africa how handle their wild life.
A sustainable management of elephants and collecting the ivory from dead by natural cause animals an selling it and use the proceeds for conservation of wild life would make much more sense. Buring thousands of pounds confiscated ivory infront of TV cameras sure makes headline but simply wastes a valuable natural resource. The animals are dead already, using the sales of this ivory in a controlled market could do something good for the survivers. Burning it only makes ivory rarer and increases the potential value for the poachers. This is plain stupid.
The numbers of elephants in some countries areas lower nowadays because of poaching than before the ivory ban with official controlled hunting. Also prohibition of alcohol in the US didn't lead to abstinence but to a sprawling illegal moonshining business and alcohol smuggeling.
Because of climate change fossil mammoth ivory becomes more and more available as the perma frost soils in Siberia are thawing. Killing elephants just for the ivory is a crime, no doubt but I think there should be a more sensible and sustainable way to control the wildlife incl. elephants.
I will try to find the documentation, not sure if it's available online. It was certainly providing food for thought.
