My First Effort | Thater Beehive Handle | Broken Knot | Seeking Advice

[Chan Eil Whiskers]

So Jim has extensively coached me on brushes as I am very new to wet shaving. He has helped me determine what I should get in a brush based on my likes and dislikes without have to buy a bunch of brushes only to dislike them. In our discussion it seemed that the Maggard 70/30 24mm was a good fit for what I wanted. So here is my journey in receiving it, assembly, and use.

This will be picture heavy. Here is the handle and knot as I received it.

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I dry fit it to see where it was as far as loft. And it was right at about 50mm which is exactly what I wanted.

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So here it is assembled with 5 minute epoxy.

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Felt great. No odor. Was a perfect balance to me of softness, backbone, and scrub. Was pretty happy with the result. The handle was great. Cool color and the perfect size and shape for me. So I washed it in dawn soap and hot water a few times. Drying it between with a towel to help the boar bristles split as I was told that would help. I then built a lather with some razorock shave soap and rinsed and dried a couple times. Then I lathered a lot and let it sit for 24 hours. Rinsed and dried again. The result was amazing.

Here it is after a couple uses.

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Couldnt be happier with the result and the brush. Im new so I havent experienced some of the higher end stuff or a boar brush yet. But as it sits right now this blows my other brush, a plissoft bruce, completely out of the water. So much more usable especially in a harder soap like Stirling that I use. Hope maybe this helps someone with their decusion.

Would you comment on your brush (knot) now. Our two brushes are about the same age. I realize the knots are two different sizes, but both have the Maggard 70/30 set about the same depth.

I'm interested mostly in the prickliness (bad scritch) issue. Yours may not have that issue, but mine has. I've had the devil of a time getting the knot to completely break in (and will shave test mine again this morning but I'm not hopeful). Otherwise it's a deliciously scrubby knot.

How's your knot?

Thanks and happy shaves,

Jim

 

[Chan Eil Whiskers]

Today I pulled the 70/30 knot out of my old Thater handle.

Anyone reading this thread knows the story. A 26 mm Maggard 70/30 bulb replaced a broken boar in a Thater beehive handle. My first (and so far only) "brush making" effort. It's the black handled brush below.

I've used the brush a lot, at least 40 or 50 times, and it's remained too pokey for my tastes.

I've been comparing my 70/30 with this Oumo mixed knot. They should be similar.​ The butterscotch is not pokey. Having done the comparison, I decided to raise the loft on the 70/30 Maggard bulb.​

Pulling the knot was harder than I expected but a pair of Vice-Grips solved the problem.

The rest was easy enough. Two quarters. Some silicon. A bit of messing around figuring things out. A bit of fingernail scrapping of old silicon. I did not attempt to do any part of today's project to a super high standard, but the job I did will be perfectly satisfactory assuming it solves the problem and gives me a brush which isn't pokey.

After all, this isn't epoxy, so it's not permanent.

The loft should be about 3 or 4 mm higher. Perhaps enough to solve the problem. We'll see.

Just reporting on the brush's progress here. Also, I want to thank everyone who has helped me with this ongoing project and learning opportunity.

Happy shaves,

Jim

 

[GAW9576]

Hope this solves the problem.

 

[Chan Eil Whiskers]

Gave it a spin. No joy. Link.