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Sawed Off MADE-RITE

Well, sometimes you receive a brush that has damage to the handle. Depending upon how bad the damage is, determines whether it can be restored or simply rejected.

In this case the handle was damaged on the dome top as well as having some severe scuffing. After some wet sanding and polishing most of the scuffing was reduced and/or eliminated. The top of the handle presented a different issue. Rather than hogging the handle out to clear the damage, I chose to take a different approach. I decided to cut the dome top off and slightly sand to level the new top of the walls.

The hole was now expanded to 24 mm and an ACE Finest was installed. The results can be seen below.

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Thanks for reviewing my latest work.
 
How did you saw it off, and how did you make that ridge?

The ridge existed as part of the original knot. The were two ridges in the brush as originally configured and when I cut it off with a Dremel wheel, I left one ridge remaining after using the top one as a cut line.
 
Thanks, and in this case the knot went from 18 mm to 24 mm. So I went up about three steps in size so it was quite a change.

Especially impressive considering you got the larger knot in deep enough to reduce the loft to 50mm. I did a similar mod to a ER 200 as my second restore. It didn't turn out quite as eloquent looking as yours, but I still use it regularly and rely on it as my travel brush. Here I sunk a 24mm boar knot from TGN in to create a 49mm loft. The catch is that I got a little over zealous with the drill and because the sides of the handle were so thin near the bottom of the where the knot needed to go, I caused a stress bubble to form on the handle.



I sanded the bubble down and used a black marker to restore the black colour. The brush works well today with no signs of harm, so no real harm done in the end. But, it made me realize that I was close to making the sidewall of the handle too thin.

I mention this because I see a similar, yet much less significant, irregularity on your brush too. In the very centre, directly under the "S" of USA, low down on the red just before the butterscotch. Did you get the sense that you were getting close to the edge or do you think you still had some room ton play with?
 
Especially impressive considering you got the larger knot in deep enough to reduce the loft to 50mm. I did a similar mod to a ER 200 as my second restore. It didn't turn out quite as eloquent looking as yours, but I still use it regularly and rely on it as my travel brush. Here I sunk a 24mm boar knot from TGN in to create a 49mm loft. The catch is that I got a little over zealous with the drill and because the sides of the handle were so thin near the bottom of the where the knot needed to go, I caused a stress bubble to form on the handle.



I sanded the bubble down and used a black marker to restore the black colour. The brush works well today with no signs of harm, so no real harm done in the end. But, it made me realize that I was close to making the sidewall of the handle too thin.

I mention this because I see a similar, yet much less significant, irregularity on your brush too. In the very centre, directly under the "S" of USA, low down on the red just before the butterscotch. Did you get the sense that you were getting close to the edge or do you think you still had some room ton play with?

Made Rites have much thicker handles than the ERs. Now the scuff on mine came with the brush on receipt. I had cleared all the glue out and hit the wall but did not have to grind the wall. The knot fit like a glove at 24 mm. Now I had to stop near the bottom of the first piece to maintain integrity of the handle. That yielded a 50 mm loft so given the overall dimensions, it did not need to go lower.
 
Ah, good to know, thanks. I like vintage handles, but have lately realized that I enjoy knots to be at least 24mm big and prefer for them to have a low loft. I was worried, given my experience with the ER 200, that my preference in knots made it such that vintage handles would not really suite my needs - seems like there are some Made Rites that could be a good option.
 
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