Amyn, you da man!

You would not believe how many positive comments I have gotten on this brush! For the record, Amyn, the commissioner of this brush, designed it. He sent me a picture of the Simpsons Tulip with his changes, I drew it up on Autosketch and sent him two drawings to evaluate. He told me which one fit his vision, and I made the brush. I probably deviated a little from the drawing since I turn by eye most of the time, but the inspiration belongs to Amyn.

So, let me be the first to say to Amyn: "You da MAN!" Very nice work. I hope the brush serves you well. BTW, Amyn has posted a review of the brush here and here. Thanks Amyn, I really appreciate that.

Sometimes it's just "same ol' same ol'"

The pic shows the view from up here on Mt. Tamalpais. My shop is atually on the dark ridge just on the left edge where the tree is. Life is good!

So how was your shave today? I had a new, red, IP in my Merkur and it was no cakewalk let me tell you. I had some pulling and scraping to contend with. I'll give it one more day, but if that blade doesn't shape up I'm going to ditch it. I guess if it is bad, I can allow for a few bad blades (at 10 cents/blade) at the moment.

Everything else about my shave was great by the way. I have been using this Truefitt and Hill 1805 shaving cream. The rest of the toolkit included my firm, 28mm brush, and coastal oak bowl. That brush is just sweet! And so is the T&H 1805. Very nice indeed!

Well, we have an update to the Rakowski case. 1Adam12 has experience with Rakowski brushes. Hmm, not good experience either. Check out his post at SRP.

Hey, this gets me off on a tangent. 1A12..., with a moniker like that, we know he's not a kid don't we? 1 Adam 12 was one of my favorite shows when I was a kid. I guess that means I ain't no spring chicken either. In fact, I'm so old, I'm too grumpy to watch television anymore; so I got rid of it! It's the blogging life for me.

So anyway, 1A12 appears to have purchased an early Rakowski brush. $20 is a bargain for sure. Though, it appears as if his brush had problems with the finish and construction. 1A12 ended up re-gluing the knot into the handle and re-finishing the cracked wood finish. That is not good. What surprised me was he had no criticism for the badgers from the, as thebigspender suggested, generic Chinese badger ranch. In fact, he likes his brush now that he has it fixed up. Imagine how good it would be if those badgers had been in a branded resort before they became a shaving brush!

Ah shoot! Enough of the badgering again!

Hey, I've been working on some Stubby/Chubby look-a-likes. These particular handles are smaller handles for smaller knots. The knots are set deep to make them firm. They're kind of cute actually. I'll post the pics when they are available of course. I have to admit they are fun to to turn!

That's it for tonight. Tomorrow I will be in Toronto on bidness. At some point, we have to pay the bills! :-)

There's gonna be some changes around here...

Those of you wanting to comment but not having a Google account, sorry about the commenting restrictions. I have corrected that. Anyone can comment, and it will be visible immediately. Have fun!

More later...

Happy Easter!

Good evening. No real blogging tonight. It was a full day of Easter here on the mountain. We started at 5:30 a.m. when about a thousand (only guessing) motorcycles rode by the house. The first wave took over 10 minutes to pass, the next few waves about 5 minutes each, and then smaller groups for the next hour. Those sunrise services do have a price. Unfortunately we had to chip in!

Okay, I finished this brush today. It's a medium firm, 28mm thuya burl (again). It sure is nice isn't it?! Hey, what have you been up to? You're seeing triples! Oh wait, that's just the same brush from three different angles.

That's it for tonight. See you tomorrow I hope!

Shaving Brushes and the Scientific Method

He’s at it again! thebigspender has weighed in with another zinger, this time at The Straight Razor Place. The subject: Custom brush maker Tom Rakowski. At least thebigspender admitted up front that he didn’t know what he was talking about… You can look here to see what I think of thebigspender's poor logic. He is consistent.

I’ve never seen one of Tom’s brushes in person either. I have seen his photos, and he does a very nice job turning his handles. Even without holding one of Tom’s brushes though, I can see a potential problem. And you will see it too when you finish this post.

Tonight, I offer you some direct knot size and characteristics comparisons. This is your chance to look at real photos and be your own knot scientist.

First, lets talk about knot size. Most knots are classified by their diameter. I use 22mm, 25mm, and 28mm silvertip badger knots. This allows me to make a range of brushes from small through pretty large. I have made some 30mm brushes -- those guys were giants!

The following picture shows you a comparison of the three knot sizes I use. All three knots are set in the board with a depth that will give them what I call a medium feel. (Here’s what I mean by medium: They should work well for both creams and soaps. If you’re a dedicated soaper, go firmer, but if you use both and only want one brush, medium is the ticket.)



So, you can see that by increasing the diameter, the knots (and brushes) get much larger. Math alert. This is because the number of bristles increases with the square of the knot diameter. For equally dense knots, a 25mm brush is 29% larger than a 22mm knot. A 28mm knot is 62% larger than a 22mm knot and 25% larger than a 25mm brush. In addition to these differences, the lofts vary. For equal lofts, larger diameter knots are firmer. So for the same feel, a larger diameter knot can support a longer loft.

This also means that we can change the firmness of a brush by changing the loft. A shorter loft on equally dense knots results in a firmer brush. There is some physics behind this, but I won't bore you with that. The empirical evidence is there. This next picture below shows three different lofts for a 25mm knot.

Quite a difference isn’t it? My experience is that many people seem to prefer a medium to firm knot. Even a densely packed knot is going to be floppy if the loft is too long.

Now back to Tom Rakowski’s brushes. Beautiful turnings. Based on his photos, his bristle loft also appears to be a pretty high loft. So if there is a potential problem here, it is that the knots are not set to create the feel that (in my experience) many people seem to prefer.

Finally, if you are a flexible brush person, then a Rakowski brush will probably work pretty well. If you ask Tom to set your knot to a specific loft, you are likely to be satisfied too. After all, that is the point of a custom brush – get it the way you want it.

The brush and the beard.

One of my blog heroes, strobist, says that this is the blogging hour. Of course he is three hours ahead of me, but you have to put some faith in your heroes. Oh, BTW, that means Mr. Hobby's blogging hour is 3:30 a.m.! I would be thinking about shaving if I was up at that hour!

So, the beard...I'm going to grow it back. I just like it. It makes me look thin!

For tonight, just a quick pic. I offer this brush that I finished today shown at left. This was another commissioned brush. It was a modified design of one of the BIG BOYS (okay that's a bit sexist, let's say BIG PEOPLES) designs. This customer knows his brushes, and he creates designs that work don't you think? The wood is thuya burl again. Schweet!!

Alright, that was the brush.

Tomorrow (or is it today?) let's talk about brush loft and firmness... One of my other customers had a great idea, and I'm going to try to act on it to actually create some useful information. That would be very cool! :-)

Blades, Blades, and More Blades

Okay, so I use the red Personna blades, often referred to as Israeli Personna or IP blades. There was extensive discussion about them on B&B back around the time I bought them. I bought them on ebay for about $10 for a hundred. I just did a quick search for them and they don't seem to be available there anymore. I wonder what that means. I suppose I will have to do a little more research.

Anyway, before I bought this huge brick of blades, I bought one of the forum sampler packs. It included Feather, Derby, Merkur, Gillette, blue and read IPs. I didn't like the Feathers -- maybe they were too sharp, because they hacked me pretty bad. The Gillettes and IPs seemed pretty similar to me. The Derbys were a step down. The Merkurs were a step down from the Derbys and the Feathers were the worst for me.

Given that the IPs seemed to work okay for me, I made the $10 commitment for the big brick. Now I have a two-year supply, and my razor is always sharp. All for about the cost of a couple of Mach 3 blades!

I usually just change my blade every Sunday without counting the shaves. That way I start the week with a fresh blade. Maybe with the increased real estate without my beard I will need to change blades more often. I guess we'll see soon!

Blades and Badgers

This is my second day without my beard. Hey, that's a lot of work shaving my whole face. I might have to let the beard grow back in. My fiance gives the thumbs up for that, so I may give in. But maybe not. I am my own man! (Yeah, right!)

So I said I would write about blades today, but before I do I want to talk about the Badger and Blade website and forums. For starters, B&B and other shaving websites can be a great source of information for the new wetshaver. I really appreciate the resources they provide, and I will highlight some of the things I like most some other day. I say that because what I'm going to say next is going to sound a bit negative: Don't believe everything you read. It seems to be a common practice in the B&B forums to pan certain types of products with no real knowledge.

Of interest to me tonight is the brush forum thread in this post. This is a post about a brush that I made as a custom brush maker. The original poster was enthusiastic because he has the awesome brush I posted about a few days ago. Others were congratulatory. And then we get the typical B&B know-it-all-party-pooper comment from thebigspender:

We've had these discussions here before and I don't want to knock anyone's custom brushes I have a few myself but what I and others here have found is that though these brushes are all gorgeous looking and would make a stunning display piece when compared to a quality brush from one of the well known makers they don't measure up in the performance department. I know mine are expertly crafted with a very dense badger knot of silvertip much larger than my Rooney or Simpson but the performance still doesn't match. Probably because the custom makers buy very generic ready made badger pucks.

Hmm, interesting. So thebigspender has apparently not used one of my brushes, or for that matter, the poster's brush, but he has an opinion about it's quality anyway. Okay, he says, it's stunning, but it's not a quality brush because it doesn't have a brand name on it. His custom brushes are expertly crafted, and large, but don't measure up to his Rooney or Simpson. I'm not sure what this means -- they are larger, but they don't measure up? They don't lather? They are scratchy? They are flexible? They are too stiff? What doesn't measure up?

Oh, I see now. The badgers came from a generic badger ranch in China instead of the designer resort badger ranch in China. That must be it.

The B&B logic goes something like this for me. I started out using a shaving brush as a 22 year-old Ensign on a nuclear powered submarine. We weren't allowed to have canned shaving cream on a sub (the propellant isn't recommended for breathing for long periods of time in a 285' sealed pipe) so we used soap and shaving brushes. I used one of the name brand production brushes -- an Old Spice boar hair brush. Big name, big manufacturer, we all had them because that is what the Navy Exchange stocked. I can tell you that the shaving brushes I make are way better than that old brush, and clearly they are better than all those other big manufacturers' brushes too.

Even in the middle of this rant I have to laugh at that last statement. Hey, that old boar hair brush was never a picnic. It did the job, but not without some daily abraiding of my tender 22 year-old face. I can't possibly paint all production brushes with the same brush as that boar hair nightmare. And you shouldn't make the same mistake with custom made wood-handled brushes.

Finally, some people actually like the feel of a boar hair brush. They might even prefer it over a Rooney or Shavemac, or a Mt. Tamalpais brush. Cool. If we all had the same brush, I'd be swamped! Awe, just kidding -- we wouldn't have our own brush at all. We would all have a barber shaving us of course.

Okay, enough of the badgering. Here's my blades:

You can see I use the red Personna blades. I'm a bit worn out after my rant, so I'll have to defer the blades topic to tomorrow. Maybe I'll even get to it...

A new look.

Yesterday I shaved off my beard. I’ve had one of those goatee style beards going for the last 14 months or so. I have to admit that I liked it quite a bit, but this weekend it became a problem.

On Saturday I came down with what I thought was a cold. I was sneezing, blowing, tearing, and had a headache. No sore throat or coughing though. I thought it was a cold anyway.

On Sunday my fiancé and I went for a bike ride to the top of Mount Tam, and when we got to the top I was cured! I went on the ride because I needed to get out after two days holed up in the house. If I had known I was going to be cured, I would have gone much sooner.

Well, to make a too long story short, it seems I have a new allergy. I’ve never had one before, but now I seem to have one.

And what that does have to do with a beard? Well, let me tell you, blowing and sneezing into a beard is just not cool. It’s okay to save a bit of dinner in your beard for later, but saving… well you get the picture. So now I’m clean shaven.

That means that I had a “new” shaving experience the last few days. One thing that worked was a nice sharp blade in my Merkur Futur shown below.



In fact, it worked so well that I didn’t need to trim my beard before cutting. That’s the beauty of a sharp double edge razor. The sharp part speaks for itself, but the nice part about a DE is that it doesn’t clog nearly as much as a more “modern” multi-blade razor.

All that with a 10 cent blade too. Next post… a few comments on the actual blade I used

Now that's a shaving brush!

This will be a quick one tonight. I turned this brush handle on my lathe this week and finished it today. It's a 28mm knot with a 58mm loft --this should be perfect for using a soap puck, but will also work well with cream. The wood is thuya burl. I have to admit that it turned out so nice that I almost told Alex, the customer, that I had slipped and gouged his brush. That way, it would be ALL MINE! Oh well, that's not me. If I really want one, I'll have to make it for myself.

I can take credit for turning the handle, but not for the quality of wood. Man (woman), that is very fine grain. One of the things I like to see is variety in the grain, and this blank has it.

Anyway, grab a paper towel and then drool at will. :-) !!!

Let the Blogging Begin!

What is this blog about? The title says it all for now. Starting out I will post about my experiences with wet shaving and try to link in to wet shaving resources on the internet.

For starters, here's a picture of my daily lathering kit:




Life is good!

I made the brush and bowl on my lathe in my workshop. The bowl is made out of some awesome coastal oak that I picked up from a down tree near my home. The brush is figured walnut with a 28mm silvertip badger hair knot. The knot is a high density knot with a 58mm loft. It's a great soap brush, but it also works pretty well with creams.

The lather above was generated in about 20 seconds from Truefitt and Hill 1805 shaving cream. Very nice.