if treated with care, how LONG can a brush last??????
Vital important question
- Thread starter ddaley212
- Start date
I can't say from experience but I have read several people in this forum say they have used the same shave brush for 10 or 20 years. I don't know how true it is though.
Longer than a Hollywood marriage. Sometimes longer than 3 of them.
I've got one that I have been using since the mid 1980's.
If you paid more than $15 for your brush, expect it to last at least a decade.
I have heard of cases longer than 30+ years.
I am still using a shaving brush made for Hoffrtiz, a company that made knives, cutlery, and shaving items, that I bought about 30 years ago. The brush was "lost" for ten years but for except for that period of time it has been in use.
It still is in great shape. It's the one on the left.
It still is in great shape. It's the one on the left.
I've had an Omega boar brush last for nearly decades. I only discarded it because I was tired of using it.
Too long for me to convince my wife that I "need" another one.
Without taking any care of it at all, my first brush lasted me 22 years. It lived in the shower, and probably never had a chance to dry out. Finally it lost the knot, and so I threw it out. I should have kept it and epoxied the knot back in, and it would probably have been good for another twenty years. With care, such as being allowed to dry between uses, I can see an easy 30 years out of a good one.
I do think that there comes a point where the structure of the hair itself begins to break down. The reason I say that is because i have a vintage boar brush, and the hairs in it seem to have become very brittle and will break if bent. However, it may not have been used for many years. Daily use with a good soap might provide enough conditioning to the hairs to prevent that.
I do think that there comes a point where the structure of the hair itself begins to break down. The reason I say that is because i have a vintage boar brush, and the hairs in it seem to have become very brittle and will break if bent. However, it may not have been used for many years. Daily use with a good soap might provide enough conditioning to the hairs to prevent that.
As some of you might recall, I recently had Rudy Vey do a restore of an old Kent badger brush that my parents bought for me in high school (I graduated in 1974). It had been my one-and-only daily use brush for more than 25 years. I used it exclusively to face lather, and I didn't take all that good care of it.
If you do a search in the brush forum, you'll see the before
and after pix. Suffice it to say that while badger hair shafts WILL eventually break, it'll take a very long time before that brush becomes totally unuseable - in my case, 25 or so years. At that rate, I expect Rudy's handiwork to keep me in lather until somewhere around 2035 (if I'm still alive then!
)
When you do the amortization on the investment of buying a quality brush, it's literally less than a tenth of a penny per use - plus, you have the joy of using a well-made tool every day. What other investment gives that kind of a return?
If you do a search in the brush forum, you'll see the before
and after pix. Suffice it to say that while badger hair shafts WILL eventually break, it'll take a very long time before that brush becomes totally unuseable - in my case, 25 or so years. At that rate, I expect Rudy's handiwork to keep me in lather until somewhere around 2035 (if I'm still alive then!) When you do the amortization on the investment of buying a quality brush, it's literally less than a tenth of a penny per use - plus, you have the joy of using a well-made tool every day. What other investment gives that kind of a return?
Longer than the hair in our heads!
You have hair on your head??
I haven't had any for longer than I can remember I think the bottom line is that if you buy even a middle of the line brush and take reasonable care of it you can expect it to last long enough that you might even forget how long its been that you have had it.
I still use my grandfathers last brush on rotation. Nothing special Erskine Badger Maybe 60-70 yrs.
I've been wet-shaving for almost 45 years and don't think I've ever actually worn out a brush, and I've never bought expensive brushes. I generally got rid of them after a number of years just because I got tired of them and wanted something new. One brush I used for almost 20 years and finally got rid of because all the plating had worn off the metal handle -- but the bristles were still good to go. I really think that if you take good care of a brush and use it properly, it should last you 25 years, at least.
You have hair on your head??
ON ou heads sorry!
A good quality brush allowed to dry upside down properly will last a lifetime and even pass it on to your son.
