Shredding brush.

[Shaver Nath]

Hi all. So I bought a vintage Old Spice lathering mug and brush off eBay and I plan to use both in an up and coming Old Spice themed shave video on my YouTube channel. The mug is great! The brush on the other hand has a strange smell which is slowly disappearing as I keep doing lathers just to try and clean and rinse it out. The problem is that it is shredding and I mean a lot. I'm not sure if this is something that will stop or if maybe the brush is damaged and the knot is loose. I have yet to use the brush on my face and at this point won't unless I can stop the shredding. Sorry for the long post but just wondering if anyone else has had this issue or has any tips. Thanks in advance.

 

[Bert0324]

You could compare the loose hairs to the brush. That would give you an indication of where the problem is. If the the knot is improperly glued the hairs will be full length. If the hairs are breaking they obviously won't be. From the photograph this looks like a cheap boar brush (excuse my bluntness) and if it's shedding hairs I'd bin it. But that's just me offcourse, hate it when they do that.

 

[Bert0324]

Sorry, rereading your post: if the brush is new it will smell for a while and may shed some hairs. Should stop in days/weeks.

 

[BobbyB]

Have you tried combing the brush with a hair comb? This removes loose bristles from mine.

 

[dfoulk]

Yeah, the scent is a clue that the brush hasn't been used a lot. In this case that would probably be a good thing. The scent comes from the oil on the animal hair. Once this oil is gone the scent is gone with it. Until then your brush can smell kinda like a wet dog. Not pleasant but in most cases it's fairly faint. To get rid of the scent a few minute soak in some OxyClean followed by a wash with some dish soap usually helps to get rid of the scent. It will also disappear with regular use which is probably the method I would choose in this case.

Now on to your shedding problem. Sometimes with new brushes some of the hairs may have been a little shorter than most of the others and may have escaped the glue that holds them together. If this is the case you can see some initial shedding that will likely stop after some use. You'll see the shedding decrease with each shave for the most part and then it'll stop. Brushes contain thousands and thousands of hairs so the loss of some isn't going to noticeably impact the brush. You can also try gently combing the knot to speed the process of getting rid of the loose hairs. Usually this will clear up in a week or two but I've had knots that I was sure had an issue, combed them out a half dozen times and they'd loose hair every day for a month and then all of a sudden they never shed another hair again.

So what it comes down to is either you have a knot with some hairs that missed the glue and is will straighten itself out in between a couple weeks and a month or the knot has a larger problem and it won't. Being a vintage knot it could be dried out bristles breaking off as well. Only one way to find out though.

Some more advice is not to mash the brush into the soap as the proper technique is to be a bit more gentle. I'll start out with larger circles but that isn't best for the brush as painting strokes are better for the knot and I'll switch to these after I get some soap with the initial circles. Not that you're mashing the brush yourself but I mention it because it can cause you to lose some hair as well.

 

[bjm]

I'm relatively new to the world of boar brushes and I'm no expert on the subject. I'm slowly learning to ask questions before offering advice, so that being said... How long do you soak the brush before you start lathering? Hot, warm, or cold water?

Hopefully you can identify and correct the problem (if there is one) with brush and get years of use from it. Good luck.

 

[Shaver Nath]

Have you tried combing the brush with a hair comb? This removes loose bristles from mine.

No I haven't but thanks for the tip.

 

[Shaver Nath]

The brush came with an Old Spice mug. I was more so interested in the mug and thought wow a vintage brush to go with it. I'm not sure if the brush is an Old Spice one or not. Anyway I could find out? Anyway the smell of the brush doesn't smell like a new boar/badger brush it smells more like mold. Maybe not being rinsed properly or didn't dry properly. Not sure.

 

[Bert0324]

Mould would weaken the hairs. They would break, and therefore wouldn't be full length. From your post I wasn't sure if both were vintage or just the mug. I don't think of brushes as vintage, just as old. Only reason for not binning it would be if it had a (very) nice handle one might want to re-use.

 

[weekly]

To me it sounds like you should
Cut your losses right now and throw
Old STACHYBOTRYS in the trash can
(The one outside) while you still have
A face to shave.

 

[Jim99]

I would just use it and see how it progresses. If the brush continues to shed, just use it till it’s done and then toss it. Don’t toss it yet.

 

[Timeclo]

That brush looks like a Van Der Hagen boar brush. That was my first brush and it shed quite a bit. l tried going back to it but it's too rough for my face and it continues to shed...

 

[Shaver Nath]

To me it sounds like you should
Cut your losses right now and throw
Old STACHYBOTRYS in the trash can
(The one outside) while you still have
A face to shave.

Haha ok cheers

 

[Shaver Nath]

That brush looks like a Van Der Hagen boar brush. That was my first brush and it shed quite a bit. l tried going back to it but it's too rough for my face and it continues to shed...

Might just have to chuck it. Do Old Spice even do/did brushes?

 

[Timeclo]

Might just have to chuck it. Do Old Spice even do/did brushes?

It seems like they do have their own brushes but it either says Old Spice or has the picture of the ship. There are a lot of examples online.

 

[Tallships]

That brush looks like a Van Der Hagen boar brush. That was my first brush and it shed quite a bit. l tried going back to it but it's too rough for my face and it continues to shed...

It does look like a VDH brush. I had one and tossed it after it kept loosing hair, they have the same handle now with boar brushes only black handle. If your lucky and after writing a complaint to VDH about their Badger brush loosing hair they sent me a decent Badger brush.

 

[ajkel64]

If it keeps shedding you could always re-knot the handle with something else as a project down the track. Just a thought.

 

[BigJ]

I agree with the consensus; the brush does not look like an OS product. That said, you have nothing to lose by using the brush for awhile to see how things turn out. In any event, you got a great mug!!

 

[Shaver Nath]

I agree with the consensus; the brush does not look like an OS product. That said, you have nothing to lose by using the brush for awhile to see how things turn out. In any event, you got a great mug!!

Exactly!

 

[Captain Coconut]

That brush doesn't happen to have any sort of logo on the bottom of the handle, does it? A windmill perhaps?

Auction site sellers often include a brush with Old Spice mugs to make it a usable set. Is there a chance you may have assumed the brush was an Old Spice brush without any intentional misdirection on the part of the seller?