The Wanderer's Journey

[thombrogan]

If a brush is this bad with only half badger content, how bad are full badger brushes? Do I even want to know the answer to that?

If you buy a “pure” badger brush, you’ll likely hate it. If you choose a higher grade of dead mustelid fuzz, it can feel and perform phenomenally. Will you like it more than a synthetic? Some people do. Will you like it enough to justify the care, increased cost, and increased drying time over a Plissoft-style synthetic? Only you can make that call.

My expectation is you’d enjoy a higher-end badger, but would still prefer your Maggards synthetic more over all. The possibility you’ll become an owner of multiple Paladin and Shavemac badger brushes, though, is never zero.

 

[Esox]

he possibility you’ll become an owner of multiple Paladin and Shavemac badger brushes, though, is never zero.

I'm willing to bet its pretty close to it! lol

 

[thombrogan]

He’ll confess to doing in that racing pigeon before he drops cash on Morris and Forndran. I’ll confess before that happens.

 

[AimlessWanderer]

If you buy a “pure” badger brush, you’ll likely hate it. If you choose a higher grade of dead mustelid fuzz, it can feel and perform phenomenally.

... assuming we all share a common preference of performance, which I'm pretty confident is not the case.

The general understanding I've gleaned from listening to others here, is that pure badger is both scritchy and scrubby. Spendy brushes can be pillowy soft, buy not necessarily scrubby. Best Badger gives some people a happy medium between the two. However, for me, that balance may still be too scritchy and still not scrubby enough. Plus of course, there's variations between individual brushes of exactly the same type.

Cost wise:
Pure badger - lowest risk, slim chance of reward, reasonable certainty of disappointment.
Best badger - higher risk, possibility of modest reward, but no certainty
Spendy badger - large risk, higher chance of luxury feel, but scrubbiness unknown, and overall performance still very uncertain.

That's my general impression anyway, and I can find NO discernible advantages to having added half a fill of badger to what otherwise might have been a decent boar brush.

The possibility you’ll become an owner of multiple Paladin and Shavemac badger brushes, though, is never zero.

Oh, yes it is!!! Zero being fractionally less than the possibility of becoming the owner of multiple uber-spendy CNC machined razors that still don't shave as well as my humbly priced Jagger. At least metals tend to have some degree of consistency to them

 

[thombrogan]

There are also high density badger brushes that are barely 2x the price of your EJ DE34D or whatever its call letters were

 

[AimlessWanderer]

There are also high density badger brushes that are barely 2x the price of your EJ DE34D or whatever its call letters were

But that's WAY more than I would be prepared to spend on ANY brush, never mind one so potentially variable (as animal hair is) and unknown in suitability. It's far too big a chunk of cash for me to gamble with on a whim. The Simpson Trafalgar T2 is the most I've ever laid out for a brush, and even that felt spendy.

However, development is underway...

A very generous chap by the name of Cal, has offered to send me a badger brush to try, which is surplus to requirements.

Not only does this give me a brush to try without gambling big bucks I don't have to lose, but - more importantly, as far as I'm concerned - it's a tried and tested brush, which Cal considers a decent performer. Obviously, If I did decide to buy a brush to try, I wouldn't have known how representative of type it was. This one I do, without having to try many different brushes to figure out where the first one fits in the overall spectrum. Now, not only do I get to try a badger brush, but my feedback on that brush actually means something to someone else, who can relate it to their experience with it.

Plus, being a tried and tested brush, if this doesn't work for me, I know badger probably isn't suitable for me, rather than just wondering if I got a duff one. In short, all my questions, will soon be answered

 

[thombrogan]

I await reading the effects of the brush on your shave

 

[TinyT]

I'm struggling to come up with a good reason to NOT send it to landfill. The best I've come up with so far, is I might get a hoarde of angry earthworms knocking on the door, complaining about the rash their families have developed.

 

[TinyT]

The possibility you’ll become an owner of multiple Paladin and Shavemac badger brushes, though, is never zero.

Oh, yes it is!!!

 

[TinyT]

I await reading the defects of the brush on your shave

ftfy

 

[AimlessWanderer]

Cold water shave with two days growth. Same London Oatcake Mahogany soap, but using the balding boar. I loaded slightly heavier than usual, after picking stray brush hairs out of the soap that I hadn't noticed at the end of the last shave. When face lathering, the lather looked a little too feeble though, even for my tastes, so I went back for more soap. A lot more.

Much more enjoyable application of lather than with the Mixed Scritchet. Not only was there zero scritch, but there was tons of backbone, assuring me the lather would be getting everywhere it needed to. I went for three passes, pausing briefly to deal with a few more Houdini hairs, and there was barely enough lather left for that final pass. Great shave though. perfectly stubble free in almost all areas, and in the other areas, what remained was negligible and hard to detect. Very happy skin post shave, with no supplementary products needed.

 

[AimlessWanderer]

The Mixed Scritchet has left the bathroom. Possibly permanently. I just cannot foresee it ever delivering what I want from a shaving brush. I'll keep it around as a general use cleaning tool though.

As the Maggards 22mm synth hadn't been returned to the bathroom, I used the balding boar for lathering with Phoenix and Beau Trafalgar. Very pleasant, and quite refreshing cold water shave. I may have enjoyed it slightly more with the Maggards synthetic though. The boar just felt a little more scrubby than I needed today.

 

[TinyT]

The Mixed Scritchet has left the bathroom. Possibly permanently.

 

[AimlessWanderer]

Shave mail!

Cal's generous PIF package landed at noon today. The brush he sent feels vastly superior to the Mixed Scritchet.

Not entirely sure what/who Kensurfs is, but I think it's possibly one of the YouTube channel geezers. Not particularly relevant to me, either way, but the brush certainly looks as feels the part, so far.

It didn't travel alone either. It was accompanied by this hyowge glass jar.

Cal tried this soap, and didn't care for the scent. When I looked it up, I saw grapefruit and peach as the supposed scents, and I commented in his thread, that stuff that is supposed to smell of peach, usually smells of baby sick. He only remembered those comments after he'd mailed it though, and did send me a PM to warn me the jar of baby sick was inbound... though not with that exact wording

I'm pleased to report, that so far, the soap doesn't smell like the baby sick scent I usually associate with peach scents, although it doesn't smell much like peach and grapefruit either. I'll reserve judgement till it's lathered.

I will be trying out the brush and soap separately though. The brush with my available mug soap, tub soap sample, and cream, that's already in the bathroom. The soap will be tried with the Maggards synthetic.

So here's the current brush line up, not counting the Hi-Brush that lives in the travel washbag

That will most likely drop back down to four, after the badger has done battle with the boar.

Thanks again, Cal. I'm looking forward to this.

 

[AimlessWanderer]

40 hour's growth. Cold water shave

Today's shave was with the newly arrived big badger, and the London Oatcake Mahogany. I only soaked the brush for around 90 seconds before using it, and that seemed to be plenty, in that it wasn't robbing moisture from the lather. It seemed a little slow to load at first, and I had to load a little longer than normal, but nothing excessive.

When it went to the face, the initial thoughts were "Excellent! Scrub without scritch!", and this quickly morphed into "This thing is HUGE". Splayed in normal use, the knot spans well beyond what I need to shave, which is the distance from ear to goatee, and with a little scrubbing action, lather was going everywhere I don't need it.

That's no big issue though. The main purpose I want a natural brush to serve, is to provide a good deep cleaning and ingrown hair freeing scrub, which my synthetic brushes fail to deliver. This big badger isn't as scrubby as a cheapo boar, but may well be scrubby enough, and feels significantly more luxurious that a cheapo boar. Not a single hair was lost during the shave either, which is a significant improvement over the natural brushes that I'm used to.

While more soap was needed, the lather it delivered was spot on, and the Oatcake lather was as good as I've had from any other brush. It does hold on to lather somewhat, but with a 26mm knot, there's a lot of bristle surface area to cover, before it will share the excess with the face.

All told, great shave, and this new brush is off to a promising start.

 

[AimlessWanderer]

Cunningly, I only did two passes yesterday, so I could shave again today. This time, with the balding boar.

Same soap, razor, blade, etc. Brush loading time was much faster, and I may have slightly overdone it, as I had to do some water only touch up afterwards, to get the usual two pass closeness.

I expected the boar today, to feel a lot more scrubby than the badger yesterday, but it didn't. However, the boar today, also felt a lot less scrubby than it did on Tuesday. Maybe due to the amount of soap used, or maybe it was due to using hot water today, and cold on Tuesday. It was however, much easier to get soap where I wanted it, due to the smaller knot size.

I think I need to keep using these two brushes alternately, for quite a few more shaves yet, before I can be sure which suits me best. One thing that I'm very sure of, is that both are vastly better than the Mixed Scritchet.

 

[thombrogan]

Boar bristles love thoroughly drying between uses, but they hold water so well. A mixed message in my flagrantly anthropomorphizing mind.

 

[AimlessWanderer]

Boar bristles love thoroughly drying between uses, but they hold water so well. A mixed message in my flagrantly anthropomorphizing mind.

It had dried out perfectly fine from Tuesday to Friday. The water holding thing is kind of lost on me though. Once I have the lather how I want it, I want it to stay that way. The only time I notice a difference in that respect between boar and my other brushes, is if I haven't soaked the brush long enough beforehand, and it draws moisture out of the lather.

 

[thombrogan]

The water you soak into the brush before shaving; so it doesn’t dehydrate/absorb/eat your lather has to be evaporated out of it later. Four days between uses should be more than enough time, though.

 

[AimlessWanderer]

Absolutely! I've killed brushes by not drying them out between uses (part of the reason I moved to synthetic), so I'm careful to give them ample drying time now.