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Three Vintage brushes given new life.

The very long long ago backstory is that I'm a big, big fan of the Semogue BC LE Mistura (mixed badger/boar knot) brush. I also collect vintage bone and ivory carved brushes. I've got a couple that had no knot or an unsalvagable knot, but I've never gotten to reknot (usually because they were very small brushes that couldn't fit a decent modern knot). I've been away from the forums for a few years... I come back and mixed knots have had a bit of a resurgence. The SOC is available mixed, as well as several other brushes.
So it all started a couple months ago. I was browsing this forum and saw a couple guys mention 24mm Mixed hair knots being available from both Maggard and an etsy seller named APshaveco. They're priced in the $20-30 range. Not crazy, not cheap. I wanted to try them but couldn't pick which one. If I buy both, I'm looking at almost $75 shipped... Then I figure another maybe $20-25 each for a handle worthy of them... It got put aside.

A couple weeks later, there was a BST listing for $25 shipped for BOTH of the knots I was interested in. It was meant to be. Now for handles. I started watching eBay and etsy for vintage brush handles. Scored a couple decent brushes in the process, but was striking out on handles in the right dimension. A couple arrived and the knots were too good to sacrifice. Another couple arrived and they were cheap chinese junk that I had mistook for a vintage plastic. Then I was visiting my parents the other week, and I saw a lot of three really nice 20-22mm looking bakelite brushes. One I didn't recognize, a Prophylactic and an everReady 750. The UnID'ed one for sure could take a 24mm, and I knew from reknotting 750's in the past that they could... and the Prophylactic was a nice bonus (it's a really comfortable handle and the knot looked in great shape). I threw a $24 bid at it and figured if I got them, I got a deal, if not, I'd find my handles elsewhere... at least I tried to. Fatfingered it and put a $240 bid in. And it was 18 hrs before the auction ended. Now, I remember when eBay changed it so bidders can't retract in last 24 hrs, so I immediately messaged seller, explained what happened and asked him to cancel my bid. (Later I found out they've reduced it to the last 12 hrs and there's a grace period now). I went to bed and woke in the morning to have a message from him saying he can't cancel the bid, I have to. I explain to him that I can't (the auction was about 8 hrs from ending now, so I actually couldn't), and he refuses to cancel my bid, saying eBay was investigating him for selling off eBay and he can't risk giving them anything they could claim was evidence of that.
I roll my eyes and figure he'll just have to cancel the sale after the fact or I'll take a NPB and complain at eBay to get it removed. Not a big deal. Been on eBay 22 yrs with zero NPB's... I'll live. Well, auction winds up ending for $60 shipped... quite a bit more than I was initially willing to spend... but I debated it and decided that the $20 or so wasn't really worth the hassle. And I'd bought from this seller before, he got a lot of nice shaving brushes, and I wanted to stay on his good side, so I just paid the $60 and chalked it up as my fat fingers fault.

Anyway... the brushes get here, and the Prophylactic knot is immaculate... so much so I suspect it's possibly a reknot. It's pretty floppy though, not a great brush imho... but the handle is really nice (like a more comfortable beehive). Sadly it's 20mm and not thick enough to fit anything bigger in there. The Unknown brush was nearly new if not NOS... but the boar knot was pretty standard so I didn't worry too much about cutting it out (It's still here, the collar was trashed but knot is OK... may use it some day). Hollowed it out a bit more and put the APshaveco knot in there no problem. The 750 I had to think about for a few days. The knot was actually in much better shape than it looked in the pictures. Yes it's frayed, but it's not missing any hairs, and it's that hard to find in usable condition Golden colored badger hair from a half century ago. If it were a higher end brush, packed denser, It'd be no question, I'd keep the brush and buy another handle... but 750's are pretty sparsely packed... probably one of the best EverReady Badgers, but not at all on par with the UK makers. Still, it's hard to bring myself to kill a knot that was perfectly usable and impossible to replace.

I decided to try to steam it out. Went smooth as could be... the knot popped out in one piece and the handle was ready. Now 750's aren't exactly easy to widen up for a 24mm (at least with as deep a seat as I wanted). So this was a bit more work, but eventually it got done and dropped the Maggard knot in there. And at the same time, I grabbed an old 16 or 18mm EverReady Rubber top Bone bottom that was missing a knot from my cabinet... hollowed it out to 20mm (removing the steel ring these brushes have in the globe), and stuck the 750's knot right in there... nice and deep to make it a brush I'll actually use.

Here's the results alongside the Prophylactic I'm still deciding what to do with.

4B70B682-0978-4074-AB51-660B0FCD4752.jpeg
 

Toothpick

Needs milk and a bidet!
Staff member
Looks good! There will be a few old handles in the upcoming auction that will need a new life
 
I pretty much never visit the front page. Can you link me to the auction details?

And thanks to you both. I'm really happy with how they turned out. Always liked the solid Bakelite vintage handles.
 
All right I took a couple extra minutes and put that boar knot from the one handle into another handle I had laying around.
 

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Thank you

So I used the Apshaveco knot today (the higher loft with the unidentified handle). Really nice knot. Blooms big and dense, with a nice little bit of scritch and good flow. I think maybe 2mm lower loft would have been ideal as it's just a bit bigger than perfect for me, but it's still a nice brush that lathers up a storm. Shed a hair or two in first use, but didn't seem like that was going to be a problem long term... they were just the loose hairs shaking out of a new knot.

I suspect at the loft I have it, it's pretty similar to what the SOC mixed hair brush would be... maybe a touch bigger. Definitely larger than my BC LE Mixed.
 
So I've used the bulb one now as well, and discovered that they're actually almost the same loft, the fan just bloomed way, way bigger. I think I prefer the bulb because as mentioned the fan is a bit big for me... but both turned out great.

And thank you, the one on the right is a pro-phy-lac-tic brush. I didn't do anything to it, just put it in the picture because I bought it along with the other two bakelite handles that were reknotted. The EverReady on the left is there because I stuck the original knot from the 750 into it.

Funny thing about the Pro-phy-lac-tic. When it got here, I recognized the name and logo and spent an hour trying to find the forum post I'd seen a Prophylactic brush in before... with no luck. Eventually gave up. Then when I was grabbing a shave stick to take with me last week, I came across where I'd seen it. I've got a NOS vintage shaving soap bowl from "Pro-phy-lac-tic" in my soap cabinet. Now I've got the pair, brush and soap.
 
So I've used the bulb one now as well, and discovered that they're actually almost the same loft, the fan just bloomed way, way bigger. I think I prefer the bulb because as mentioned the fan is a bit big for me... but both turned out great.

And thank you, the one on the right is a pro-phy-lac-tic brush. I didn't do anything to it, just put it in the picture because I bought it along with the other two bakelite handles that were reknotted. The EverReady on the left is there because I stuck the original knot from the 750 into it.

Funny thing about the Pro-phy-lac-tic. When it got here, I recognized the name and logo and spent an hour trying to find the forum post I'd seen a Prophylactic brush in before... with no luck. Eventually gave up. Then when I was grabbing a shave stick to take with me last week, I came across where I'd seen it. I've got a NOS vintage shaving soap bowl from "Pro-phy-lac-tic" in my soap cabinet. Now I've got the pair, brush and soap.

Nowadays it would be an interesting name for a brush, particularly a toothbrush, company. Interesting that they made training bayonets in WWII.
 
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