New Brush Day - Break in question

[musicman1951]

One of my SOC boar's has been losing 4-5 hairs every shave. I've used it about 750 times and don't think I abused it in any way. Regardless, it's now retired. It has plenty of hairs left, but I don't choose to pick them off my face or razor - thank you very much.

I looked around for a replacement with similar attributes and realized that for under $30 I should just get another SOC boar. So I did. It arrives today.

I decided to try the cold water 2-3 day soak for a quicker break in. I note that the method suggests keeping the soaking brush in the refrigerator.

Why? What does the colder water accomplish?

 

[BigJ]

I have not tried this ‘cold water’ method, so take this with a grain of salt!

My understanding repeated cycles of getting the hairs wet then letting them dry is the key. Thus, I would just use the brush and let it dry well between uses. Others certainly advocate different approaches.

 

[patten1969]

Just use it and let the process happen naturally. IMO, there is no reason to speed up the break-in process, and a lot of suggestions for speeding up the process aren't necessary and could damage the brush.

 

[Graybeard57]

I have not tried this ‘cold water’ method, so take this with a grain of salt!

My understanding repeated cycles of getting the hairs wet then letting them dry is the key. Thus, I would just use the brush and let it dry well between uses. Others certainly advocate different approaches.

Yes^. I own three boars, and this is how I've broken them in. I simply use them.

 

[vsp]

I decided to try the cold water 2-3 day soak for a quicker break in. I note that the method suggests keeping the
soaking brush in the refrigerator.

Why? What does the colder water accomplish?

I have used this method on a lot of boars and I can attest that it does work. Never carried out a controlled study with one brush in the fridge and another outside for the same duration. So, I can't really say what role the fridge (or colder water) plays.

 

[musicman1951]

I have used this method on a lot of boars and I can attest that it does work. Never carried out a controlled study with one brush in the fridge and another outside for the same duration. So, I can't really say what role the fridge (or colder water) plays.

The brush has been in the fridge for a day and a half now, so I'll see how it goes. I just wondered about the cold water. I'm not going to buy another brush just to test the cold water theory.

This is my third SOC and I know that it takes over two months to break one in with just normal use. While that's not the biggest burden in my life, it's really pretty easy to put a brush in a glass of water and place it in the fridge. It just doesn't seem like asking too much for a promised acceleration of the process.

 

[vsp]

The brush has been in the fridge for a day and a half now, so I'll see how it goes. I just wondered about the cold water. I'm not going to buy another brush just to test the cold water theory.

This is my third SOC and I know that it takes over two months to break one in with just normal use. While that's not the biggest burden in my life, it's really pretty easy to put a brush in a glass of water and place it in the fridge. It just doesn't seem like asking too much for a promised acceleration of the process.

If I may make some suggestions -
1. When it's time to dry the brush on a towel, do spend a lot of time doing it - say over 5 minutes. That's where I suspect much of the break-in happens, from the friction involved in the drying. Use a bath towel, so you can keep using dry areas of the towel as the damp brush renders the towel damp. The knot should be almost completely dry when you are done with this step
2. Leave the brush to further dry upright for as long as it needs (12 hours in my home, might be longer than that in yours) to become absolutely bone dry.

Only then should you either use it in a shave or go for another iteration in the fridge.

I just completed one iteration of this process on the two scrubby brushes from Zenith. They are drying upright, but I can already see that at least 60% of the bristles have begun to split at the tips. I'm confident that in 3 iterations, this process will affect almost every single bristle.

That doesn't mean the brushes (and your SOC) will be "done", but that they will have completed a significant portion of the journey to a full break-in and will be almost as pleasant in use now as they are to be after full break-in

Good luck

 

[musicman1951]

OK - finished the three day break-in. I still have no idea why the water should be 40 degrees rather than 70 degrees, but I'm not buying enough new brushes to do a proper experiment.

After two days I did the towel rub for 20 minutes while watching TV - no big deal. Same after three days.

So how did it work? As predicted: better than just using the brush, but far from being fully broken in. Now this is an SOC - famous for requiring a 2 month break-in. It was certainly a pretty painless procedure and I'd do it again, but I still have questions:

Why cold water?
How much of a difference would only two days make?
How about one day?