I recently acquired a Rooney extra dense--a brush not in the current Rooney lineup, different from their stock brushes and different from the specialty Heritage line, both original 3-band, 2-band, and XL. There has been a more recent release from Classic Shaving of extra dense Rooney brushes ( I don't think there's any official moniker for this batch), but I believe this brush in my possession is from the original release. If someone has those threads, please feel free to link them.
I've tried lots of brushes. There are only 3 which have been on my want list: Rooney extra dense, Rooney Finest, and Simpson Manchurian. The last two are absurdly priced, so there's no shot at those. The Rooney extra dense is just plain hard to find. So I finally got one. Apropos of nothing, but some of the best brushes never show up on the BST--deals are made privately, in the dark, smokey corners of B&B
. That's how I acquired this brush, as well as the brush I most want to compare it to, an original Heritage 3-band. If you want some background reading, here are a couple of my threads, in decreasing order of usefulness for this thread.
Rooney Heritage Madness
Rooney Heritage 3-band
Rooney Heritage Original 3-band
Chubby Smackdown
First, a word about my taste in brushes. I love soft tips, and I am more sensitive to scritch than most (as far as I can tell). Most of the brushes I've sold are gone because the tips weren't soft enough. I also like dense brushes. That's my second reason for getting rid of brushes. Third, I like big knots. The only brushes I have left are big.
So here it is (28mm knot, 50mm loft), next to its cousins M&F 3-band (left) and original Heritage 3-band (right).
On spec, it seems to have most in common with the M&F. One might think that they are clones, since my guess is Lee Sabini made both of them (they both seem to be touched by the magic hands of Sabini
). One inconsequential difference is the handle material. The M&F is a solid ivory, the Rooney is marbled. However, I have a 2-band M&F chubby-style with the same marbling. Another difference is the knot size. Notice that the M&F is bigger, about 31mm.
But here's the important part, which makes these two entirely different brushes: The Rooney has, to my feel, the same amount of hair as the M&F. This, in a smaller hole, means it really is extra dense. Of course, this is nothing against the M&F, which is very dense and a fantastic brush. But clearly the brush maker was determined to pack as much hair as possible in the Rooney.
(Here's an overhead, but don't judge density based on this.)
It is so dense, in fact, that the most comparable brush is not the M&F chubby-style, but my original 3-band Stubby 3. The stubby, as my linked posts show, is the densest brush I've ever held. It's got tons of backbone because it is packed so tight, though the hairs themselves are thin. The same thing is true with the Rooney extra dense. It is the closest thing I've found to my beloved Stubby 3. I consider them a part of the same family. They both are small knots (by my measure) but feel very big because there's so much hair (also the flat shape of the Stubby 3). The size of the hole isn't the only factor in making a "big" brush!
I should also mention Shavemac 3-band, which maybe are equally dense, but the hair type is very different: stiffer, and more scritchy.
This is probably my very favorite shave: big brush straight out of a brush scuttle, face-lathering Sir Irisch Moos (or another fantastic stick). Some guys around here care about "flow through"--I'm certainly not one of them. Because of its incredible density, it does not want to let go of the lather.
And yes, it's scritchless, which is hard to come by with so much hair stuffed in there. This is an epic brush.
I've tried lots of brushes. There are only 3 which have been on my want list: Rooney extra dense, Rooney Finest, and Simpson Manchurian. The last two are absurdly priced, so there's no shot at those. The Rooney extra dense is just plain hard to find. So I finally got one. Apropos of nothing, but some of the best brushes never show up on the BST--deals are made privately, in the dark, smokey corners of B&B
. That's how I acquired this brush, as well as the brush I most want to compare it to, an original Heritage 3-band. If you want some background reading, here are a couple of my threads, in decreasing order of usefulness for this thread.Rooney Heritage Madness
Rooney Heritage 3-band
Rooney Heritage Original 3-band
Chubby Smackdown
First, a word about my taste in brushes. I love soft tips, and I am more sensitive to scritch than most (as far as I can tell). Most of the brushes I've sold are gone because the tips weren't soft enough. I also like dense brushes. That's my second reason for getting rid of brushes. Third, I like big knots. The only brushes I have left are big.
So here it is (28mm knot, 50mm loft), next to its cousins M&F 3-band (left) and original Heritage 3-band (right).
On spec, it seems to have most in common with the M&F. One might think that they are clones, since my guess is Lee Sabini made both of them (they both seem to be touched by the magic hands of Sabini
). One inconsequential difference is the handle material. The M&F is a solid ivory, the Rooney is marbled. However, I have a 2-band M&F chubby-style with the same marbling. Another difference is the knot size. Notice that the M&F is bigger, about 31mm.But here's the important part, which makes these two entirely different brushes: The Rooney has, to my feel, the same amount of hair as the M&F. This, in a smaller hole, means it really is extra dense. Of course, this is nothing against the M&F, which is very dense and a fantastic brush. But clearly the brush maker was determined to pack as much hair as possible in the Rooney.
(Here's an overhead, but don't judge density based on this.)
It is so dense, in fact, that the most comparable brush is not the M&F chubby-style, but my original 3-band Stubby 3. The stubby, as my linked posts show, is the densest brush I've ever held. It's got tons of backbone because it is packed so tight, though the hairs themselves are thin. The same thing is true with the Rooney extra dense. It is the closest thing I've found to my beloved Stubby 3. I consider them a part of the same family. They both are small knots (by my measure
) but feel very big because there's so much hair (also the flat shape of the Stubby 3). The size of the hole isn't the only factor in making a "big" brush!I should also mention Shavemac 3-band, which maybe are equally dense, but the hair type is very different: stiffer, and more scritchy.
This is probably my very favorite shave: big brush straight out of a brush scuttle, face-lathering Sir Irisch Moos (or another fantastic stick). Some guys around here care about "flow through"--I'm certainly not one of them. Because of its incredible density, it does not want to let go of the lather.
And yes, it's scritchless, which is hard to come by with so much hair stuffed in there. This is an epic brush.
