Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsAn excellent shaving brush. Great value for handmade best badger.
Reviewed in the United States on February 4, 2013
This is my first shaving brush. I have been using it for 5 months now, as my beginning into DE shaving. The brush is high quality, hand knotted in Sheffield England. It feels soft and smooth on your face and beard and shaving is now a luxury for me, not just a daily chore, the brush softens the hair and works great, you can feel the exfoliation effects...now I know why my wife loves facials. The included stand is very nice and matches perfectly, I am very happy with the stand included. If you want pretty chrome and want to spend buy one, after all this is a bathroom counter accessory. A stand is a must to let your brush air dry properly, with the brush tips down, and you never want to rest the brush on it's bristles, so even during shaving flip it over to rest it on the counter, once dry completely you can invert your brush on its' top for storage.
How to choose a shave brush? I knew to go with badger hair from all my research on DE & wet shaving, but picking the quality of badger hair from the 4 types of badger hair qualities was difficult. Better hair is better right? Yes but also very expensive. Well being new to wet shaving I did not want to ruin a very expensive brush, so I eliminated the top two qualities and targeted the best quality brush I could find under $60. This brush was about $45 included a stand and was Best Badger. That was the easy winner.
I also choose a rounded brush over a staight brush, because it would cover more of my face faster, and provide more surface area. The medium size is ideal for my average size face. I lather up in 4 quadrants to keep the face lather wet, a good wet lather is important to a good and comfortable shave. Once you finish a quadrant rinse and move to the next area. Come back at the end and go over any areas you missed, short hairs left, or better yet redo the whole face.
My brush looses an occasional hair which can be either a sign of poor quality or misuse. As I became more experienced, the hair loss from the brush is much less. Maybe one hair a week, it is still a lot but I am not an expert on wet shaving yet either, so for the price and inexperience I think that's me being to hard on the brush.
If you take care of this brush it should last many years. Being new to wet shaving I have to remind myself not to press too hard so I don't ruin the brush tips...that ruins your brush. I bought a quality shave cream - Taylor of Old Bond also from Amazon. I started lathering with an old mug, but I was banging the top of the brush annoying my wife and not getting a good lather. I now use a small Pyrex bowl to lather up and that works great, lots of room and I get a great lather....spending a minute to gently work up a good lather is well worth the time.
I love this brush it will sit next to the Jagger 98l DE razor I bought as my first DE razor for many years.
