Safe to Trim Brushes?

[Edinburgh]

I have noticed a few stray hairs which are protruding from the loft of my Muhle V2 Synthetic. Is it safe to trim these hairs with scissors? While we are at it, is it safe to trim natural hair brushes such as badgers and boars?

Can anyone weigh in on this?

 

[mblakele]

Care to define "safe"? I think the risk of explosions is low, for example. The brush will still probably lather fine, but you might notice more prickle from any trimmed hairs.

Someone else may have experience with synthetics, but I can say a word or two about traditional brush materials.

Badger hair tapers to a point. If trimmed, the larger cross-section tends to make it feel scratchier than the original tip would feel. Much the same is true of horse hair. Here is an image of a single TGN finest hair. I think the tip is actually broken at an angle, but you can see how it tapers along the shaft.



And here is an image of an old Kent brush, showing a mix of broken tips and whole ones. This brush feels a little scratchy, but not intolerably so.



Boar bristles tend to split ("flag") at the ends, making them feel softer as the brush breaks in. This is visible to the naked eye. A clipped bristle may eventually split, but will not split as readily as untrimmed bristles. See http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthread.php/186908-Just-gave-my-Omega-Pro-49-boar-a-haircut and http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthread.php/189287-Boar-brushes-why-don-t-clipped-hairs-split for previous discussion of trimming boars.

Here is an image of broken-in Semogue (SOC) tips, showing flagging. There are also some broken tips visible.

 

[deruitem]

I agree with the above!

 

[takeshi]

I wouldn't recommend it.

 

[rajagra]

If it's just a few hairs it won't make much difference. If you're worried even those few might become scratchy, you should cut them a bit shorter than the other hairs. Decide before cutting, it will probably be hard to find the offending items once you cut them to the same height as all the others.

 

[GDCarrington]

Do not cut the hairs on synthetics. That has in the past created brushes that have hard and rough areas because the cuts will not be clean (small jags) that will make the brush scritchy. Even experienced brush making companies early on made this mistake and customers were not happy with the results. Needless to say, they learned not to cut the synthetic fiber tips off.

 

[NSmalls]

Never trim a brush! If it really bothers you, I suppose you could pull out the longest hair with tweezers.