Simpson Brushes | Tell Me True | Is Mashing Bad?

[Dave-the-rave]

I find synthetics like a good mashing. They don't bloom as such but they do loosen up a bit.
Good work mash that brings back memories. I served in a Scottish Regiment in the British Army. We called Englishmen Mash Men. Dunno why. A Jock Regiment and a Mash Regiment on the town meant claret flowed. Wild times.

 

[EclipseRedRing]

I have owned many Simpson brushes but now have only a Duke 3 Manchurian, Chubby 1 Manchurian, Duke 1 Best, Wee Scot, and Chubby 2 Synthetic. I swirl and mash them all because it feels great and I love it. I could not care less if it damages the knot or produces an inferior lather as the brushes exist solely to give me pleasure, not to be preserved for all eternity. I have never had an issue with shedding other than with a few modern Best grade brushes and they shed from new. I do not enjoy Simpson Super grade as for me it has insufficient backbone for face lathering. YMMV.

 

[BigJ]

Thank you for sharing your experience, Jim, and thanks to everyone.

I've been offered a brand new, never used Chubby 2 in Best (offered since I started this thread today) and have purchased it. A very good deal as I saw it, too. I wasn't actually planning to buy a brush just yet, but grabbed the opportunity.

It will be my first Simpson and my first brush in Best.

Happy shaves to everyone,

Jim

Enjoy the brush!!

I have a fair number of Simpsons and enjoy them! I tend to ‘paint’ but don’t mash.

 

[Chan Eil Whiskers]

Slippery s(l)oap slope my friend. If you like splay but firm, the Chubby 3 is unparalleled. Oh well. And then there’s the Polo 10. But those cured my BAD for good.

Slippery indeed.

I looked up the Polo 10. Compared it with a Vulfix 2236 Silvertip Badger which I'm test driving. The 2236 is a huge brush with a huge handle, but the Polo 10 is bigger especially in handle height. Holy cow! Is there a Polo 12?

Your post gets from me two things.

But, you also get...

Happy shaves,

Jim

 

[SliceOfLife]

There's a Kent V16... that's the biggest brush I've seen that was actually intended to be used.

It's 38mm knot and I'd guess 75 or so loft... and as dense as a chubby.

Never owned one, but I briefly had a V14 a few months back. Sold it for a song on eBay.. It was 34mm if memory serves? Reminded me quite a bit of a Chubby 3, but a bit loftier and I didn't like the handle nearly as well.

 

[Chan Eil Whiskers]

There's a Kent V16... that's the biggest brush I've seen that was actually intended to be used.

It's 38mm knot and I'd guess 75 or so loft... and as dense as a chubby.

Never owned one, but I briefly had a V14 a few months back. Sold it for a song on eBay.. It was 34mm if memory serves? Reminded me quite a bit of a Chubby 3, but a bit loftier and I didn't like the handle nearly as well.

Here's a V16 someone restored. The knot they used was a 36 mm.

I thought you said the brush was big?

 

[htownmmm]

Slippery s(l)oap slope my friend. If you like splay but firm, the Chubby 3 is unparalleled. Oh well. And then there’s the Polo 10. But those cured my BAD for good.

I own 4 Simpson's currently (Duke 3, Chubby 2, Chubby 3 in Best and a Chubby 2 Synth) and all of them are used for face & head lathering. They get splayed and mashed (but not to the glue bump) and painted regularly. I lost some hairs on the Chubby 2 initially but none since. basically, i use them like I own them.

They do make them in other handle colors also; every time a thread like this comes up, I have to go look at thier webiste to view the Chubby 2 in Manchurian...


marty

 

[Badgerstate36]

I use my Simpsons pretty hard and they are yet to shed a single hair. IMO, Simpson is just erring on the side of caution.
If you are supposed to use paintbrush motions when you build lather, how are you suppose to load the brush? Dont most people do circular motions when they load their brush on a soap puck?

 

[Dzaw]

A year and change ago (at keast I think it was that long... might have been last summer?) I bought some vintage Simpson and Rooney brushes at an antique store.

the larger brushes among them had this really gnarley hole in the middle - like if you had peeled away the outer third of hairs and burned down the center third.

when I posted pics of them on this forum, I was told it is called doughnuting, and it comes from mashing and splaying aggressively rather than painting while lathering.

not that I dnt splay the bristles on my brushes, but I try to be gentle about it now that I’ve had them re-knotted.

 

[rudyt]

My philosophy is simple. I refuse to adapt to a brush's recommended practices - the brush must support the way I prefer to lather.

I splay (possibly mash) and do circles with all my brushes, including Simpsons badgers. My choices were simple; use it the way I want, or don't buy it. Buying it and changing the way I lather was never an option.

None of my brushes shed.

 

[SliceOfLife]

I use my Simpsons pretty hard and they are yet to shed a single hair. IMO, Simpson is just erring on the side of caution.
If you are supposed to use paintbrush motions when you build lather, how are you suppose to load the brush? Dont most people do circular motions when they load their brush on a soap puck?

Just like face lathering, even though instinctually you do do circles to load the brush, back and forth motion works just as well.

TBH, I think loading in circles is more likely to cause damage than lathering in circles, but I avoid both.


I own enough brushes I could mash and twist and probably get away with it. It'd still take decades at the rate I use them (because my rotation is big) for a donut to form. But I also sell my brushes fairly regularly. I've got maybe 5 (which I use) that I've owned more than 3 years. The whole "I own it, so I'm going to use it how I like" stance becomes a lot less acceptable when you consider that you may sell these brushes at some point. It's like arguing, "I don't like changing my oil, and I bought the car so I'm not changing the oil... I'm at 15,000 miles and she's still running great, so obviously this is OK" then selling that car and buying another.


I've bought an ~10 yr old brush with a donut (not a Simpson) on BST. Seller disclosed that fact and I got it for a very good price because of that. But this was 2 band hair, that the seller felt he had used relatively lightly... just regularly... but he admitted he swirled. Outside of the knot was in fantastic shape. The donutted part was missing about 1cm in height, and every use the hairs were breaking off in 5mm-15mm pieces. The inner hairs were brittle like straw. (I eventually cut out the entire center core of the brush and replaced it with undamaged 70+ yr old (but not abused) hair)


This does damage the brushes. It's not a matter of how well they're made (except perhaps for synth brushes), it's a matter of how much use the brush gets. If you want to use the brush for 10-50 years regularly, follow the manufacturers instructions. If you're OK with shortening the brushes life through what can only be considered abuse, that's your right... but it's not your right to pass that abused brush onto an unknowing second owner if you sell it, and its not right to complain about the durability of brushes that are damaged by use that has been proven for a century will damage a brush and which the manufacturers themselves warn you will damage the brush.

 

[Badgerstate36]

Just like face lathering, even though instinctually you do do circles to load the brush, back and forth motion works just as well.

TBH, I think loading in circles is more likely to cause damage than lathering in circles, but I avoid both.


I own enough brushes I could mash and twist and probably get away with it. It'd still take decades at the rate I use them (because my rotation is big) for a donut to form. But I also sell my brushes fairly regularly. I've got maybe 5 (which I use) that I've owned more than 3 years. The whole "I own it, so I'm going to use it how I like" stance becomes a lot less acceptable when you consider that you may sell these brushes at some point. It's like arguing, "I don't like changing my oil, and I bought the car so I'm not changing the oil... I'm at 15,000 miles and she's still running great, so obviously this is OK" then selling that car and buying another.


I've bought an ~10 yr old brush with a donut (not a Simpson) on BST. Seller disclosed that fact and I got it for a very good price because of that. But this was 2 band hair, that the seller felt he had used relatively lightly... just regularly... but he admitted he swirled. Outside of the knot was in fantastic shape. The donutted part was missing about 1cm in height, and every use the hairs were breaking off in 5mm-15mm pieces. The inner hairs were brittle like straw. (I eventually cut out the entire center core of the brush and replaced it with undamaged 70+ yr old (but not abused) hair)


This does damage the brushes. It's not a matter of how well they're made (except perhaps for synth brushes), it's a matter of how much use the brush gets. If you want to use the brush for 10-50 years regularly, follow the manufacturers instructions. If you're OK with shortening the brushes life through what can only be considered abuse, that's your right... but it's not your right to pass that abused brush onto an unknowing second owner if you sell it, and its not right to complain about the durability of brushes that are damaged by use that has been proven for a century will damage a brush and which the manufacturers themselves warn you will damage the brush.

When I puck load with any of my Simpsons, I load them by doing paintbrush motions or by scrubbing back and forth. It sees to work fine.

 

[Tedolph]

This is crazy! How are you going to scrub your face with the warm brush (one of the best parts of wet shaving), if you don't mash the brush into your face and swirl it around. (Is this getting too pornographic?) The Semogue 1503 shown below must be at least 5 or 6 years old and I mash, splay and swirl every shave!

Looks OK to me.

 

[rudyt]

This is crazy! How are you going to scrub your face with the warm brush (one of the best parts of wet shaving), if you don't mash the brush into your face and swirl it around.

I'm the same way. Circles and mashing are not abuse, and if that's the way you like to shave and a brush can't support it, it's not worth having.

Simpsons uses it as an escape clause for warranty claims to cover up shoddy manufacturing processes and/or lack of in-process quality control. My Semogues and Omegas, like yours, seem to be doing fine, and the factory is confident enough in their product to not have to stoop to giving themselves an out to cover their butts.

It's your brush - keep mashing and swirling if it puts a smile on your face.

 

[SliceOfLife]

Hair breaking is what causes donutting. That’s not a manufacturing defect, it’s a limitation of the raw materials.

 

[rudyt]

Hair breaking is what causes donutting. That’s not a manufacturing defect, it’s a limitation of the raw materials.

Donuting is more due to tangling than it is to hair breakage. If it were breakage, people would be complaining more about the brush shedding, before it becomes serious enough to show a donut hole.

Horse brushes tangle easy, but I like mine so much I use it often, mashing and swirling of course. I just comb it out every shave and still no shedding or donut hole after about 400 shaves.

 

[old_school]

I'm the same way. Circles and mashing are not abuse, and if that's the way you like to shave and a brush can't support it, it's not worth having... It's your brush - keep mashing and swirling if it puts a smile on your face.

Check this video at 0:00. Pretty sure making lather using the root of the knot ain't what the maker had in mind. Could be wrong...

 

[SliceOfLife]

I’m not gonna say you’re wrong, but if you’re right you should go on eBay and buy every big maker vintage brush with a donut and comb it out and resell it for three times what you bought it for because that’s about the difference in price between ones that have donuts and ones with good knots. Easy way to prove you’re right and you’ll make a lot of profit doing it.

 

[rudyt]

Check this video at 0:00. Pretty sure making lather using the root of the knot ain't what the maker had in mind. Could be wrong...

When I say mashing, I don't mean mashing the knot so hard that I'm lathering with the top of the handle. What I consider mashing is not using just the tips, but rather splaying the brush about 50% of it's loft - just guessing because I never measured it.

 

[shaveSymptomatic]

I guess we should start by defining what people mean by "mashing the brush". Is splaying the top 1/3 of the brush considered mashing? Is 50% considered mashing?
I think up to 1/3 is OK, anything beyond that is mashing. I arrived at 1/3 because this is what I've seen in brush instruction sheets. I can't remember from which manufacturer(s).