Simpson Handle Question

[old_school]

I have a new Duke 3 best. Are the Simpson handles weighted? When I shake the water out of my brush I feel a vibration in the handle.

I did a light tug on the knot and it doesn’t move. If I had set the knot myself I would think it’s a penny moving around.

Could that be a loose weight or should I play it safe and send the brush back while I still can?

Let it thoroughly dry and try it. I'd like to know what you find. I thought the $39 Duke recently acquired did the same shaking water out of it while rinsing. Didn't do it when dry and no longer does. So might have been my imagination.

 

[MtView]

Let it thoroughly dry and try it. I'd like to know what you find. I thought the $39 Duke recently acquired did the same shaking water out of it while rinsing. Didn't do it when dry and no longer does. So might have been my imagination.

It’s interesting that you say that because I only noticed it when it was mostly dry and I gave it a shake to see if more water would come out. I also got it from Amazon, but missed out on that price!

The feeling of the vibration was enough for me to picture the knot in one hand and the handle in the other. It‘s quite odd. There shouldn’t be enough room in that handle for anything to move around enough to cause that vibration.

 

[MtView]

I've drilled the knot out of a late "Made in England" period Special and the glue they were using at that point is more like cement... *very* hard and sort of off-white colored. Definitely not regular epoxy, or any other glue I have seen before, really more like "engineering resin" used in cast garden sculptures. I doubt that it would be affected by any temperatures that were safe for the bristle!

I could however see how an air bubble (there were a few small air bubbles under the knot I drilled out) in the "glue", with a tiny ball of hardened material loose in it could turn a brush into a furry maraca.

That’s very interesting because they are probably using the same glue mixture, right? I watched a YouTube video of a worker at Simpsons dropping glue from a stick into a batch of handles without touching the sides of a handle. If it were rock hard like that maybe it would be heavy enough to thunk around.

Furry Maracas -

 

[SliceOfLife]

I had a 50's era chubby that I removed the knot of and it was a glass like resin that had been poured into the handle after turning/cutting out the shelf that the hairs were set in.

Also removed three+ modern ones and neither had anything that should rattle around in there. One looked like your typical replacement knot "plug" and the others looked more like the white glued together base I've come to expect from higher end brushes.

 

[awa54]

yeah, that Special was definitely not a pre-made plug type assembly, it looked as if the glue was poured in the socket, followed by the hair bundle, then it cured in situ.

AFAIK, the handles are turned from solid resin block or rod stock, there really shouldn't be any air space in the handle, nor is there need for additional weight, since the resin is quite dense.

Like I said, there were some air bubbles in the glue in my Special, which were likely responsible for it's case of terminal shedding, but it really seems unlikely that there could be something inside a bubble, since the glue had to be liquid when it went in the knot socket.

 

[Dave-the-rave]

I was just typing as your reply came in. My little sister once complained that her stuffed rabbit was clicking. My father thought she was nuts but cut it open to show her ... maggots, or some sort of larvae.