Thread: Knot Sources Pros Cons

Right. As you all know, I get bored easily. And I detest guesswork. I think there has been a lot of it in this thread. Too much for my personal liking. So I picked up the phone and called a couple of brushmakers. It bears repeating that by "brushmaker", I mean "manufacture who hand make brush knots, and glue them into handles", not "person who glues brush knots into self made handles".

Here is what I found out...

Badger hair is sourced in China

Everyone uses hair from China, whether it be Chinese, or European brush makers. No exceptions, at least as far as silvertip badger hair is concerned.

There are exactly three types of badger hair - the rest is marketing speak

There is black badger for paint brushes. There is grey for low end brushes. There is silver(tip) for high end brushes. No exceptions. The rest is a marketing ploy to sell grey badger (cheap) with some silvertip (rare and expensive) mixed into the knot to allow for higher prices.

Most badger brushes are machine made, and cut into shape

Thanks many to Hirlau for providing the images. Let me explain what they mean.


Front: a bulk of badger hair ready to be processed. Back: finished knots.


More bulks. As you can see, they are loosely shaken into a knot shaped form towards the top, but they are most certainly not finished. This happens later, namely here:


What you can see in this picture are proto knots ready for processing. They have been put into a metal ring, and the bottom part of the badger hair has been cut off. The bottoms have then been stuffed into a plastic cap filled with glue. What you can see in the picture is the glueing/hardening process.


Knots hung up for drying.

Now, here is the missing picture: A hair clipper like machine to cut the knots into shape, bulb or fan.

This is a fast, and efficient process that requires comparatively little manual work. The result, however, is a knot that has been cut into shape. Is that a problem? It depends. See next section...

A high quality brush has not been cut into shape, because fine tips

Much has been said about the "gel like feel" of certain high quality brushes. Rooney, Simpson, Shavemac, Thäter are prime example. The Mühle "Retro" line (at least the one I own), too. Maybe others. Take a magnifying glass. Check the tips of your badger hairs. If they are fine, you have a fine brush.

A high quality, hand made brush is far more labour intensive, and therefore more expensive

Take a look at the machine made brushes above again. Now, think how you could use that process and retain the fine tips. I cannot be sensibly done. Instead, a different process is used. Badger hairs - typically pre-processed to get only the finest quality hairs by a specialised provider - are selected according to length. Then, they are hand bound into a proto knot. This knot is put into a metal ring, and the cord used to keep the knot together is removed. This is why HarryWally got the - wrong! - impression that the Thäter knot had not been hand bound. The bottom of the knot is then glued together, then an additional layer of glue is applied, resulting in the tell tale "foot" of such brushes:



Additionally, and you will only find this with Shavemac and Thäter brushes, the hair is selected and processed in a way that each brush looks more or less like the other, while Simpson brushes are mostly unique, ie there are wider variances in colour. This has, I must add, absolutely no impact on the performance of the brush, it is simply an aesthetic feature.

Cost of labour and raw materials do not make the real difference

I was wrong here, and I can only offer my apologies for the rant about child labour in sweat shops. The differences for Chinese producers and European ones are negligible. The differences are mostly in:

1. Select grade of Europe processed badger hairs: As stated previously, the European brush makers listed above use select grade hairs, resulting in more uniform, and potentially better, knots.
2. Grammage: The term "overstuffed" is used a lot, and mostly wrongly. The correct term is "understuffed". If you check the actual "Ringmaß" (ie size of the ring used to hold the knot together), you will find that many cheaper brushes are smaller than they are listed. Additionally, many use less hair per mm than they should, ie the grammage is lower.

And that's it. Riddle solved. On with the shaving show.

I hope you find this useful. It took me 45 minutes to gather that information. I should have done it earlier. Sorry for that.

The Simpsons vid of knot making in an earlier post does show staff trimming the knots in the final stage just before gluing and assembly with the handle. The trimming was done on the butt/glue plug end of the knot and not a time consuming reshaping of the knot tips.

Never have seen a vid or photos of a Chinese badger knot being made in one of their factories. Seeing a vid of that would really help clear up a few things.

Bob

Just checked the tips of 5 badger silvertip brushes, 3 from the EU and 2 from China. I used the hand loupe I had for honing and to my untrained eye I had a hard time seeing much of a difference in how the tips looked. On all 5 brushes some appeared fine tipped and others appeared cut all in the same knot. It might be worthwhile to check a few out as I am puzzled by what I thought I was seeing.

Bob

Bob I would assume that you would have to look at "New Knots" since wear and tear occurs even from the beard

I could be wrong but that was my thought

Of course Magnification is sometimes not even proof for some, I have seen people argue "Factory Shave Readiness" even when the magnified edge is right there in front of them to see ...

I have a New TGN knot at home but I do not have a New premium brush that I haven't used


I will see if I can't get a USB shot

Originally Posted by BobH

Just checked the tips of 5 badger silvertip brushes, 3 from the EU and 2 from China. I used the hand loupe I had for honing and to my untrained eye I had a hard time seeing much of a difference in how the tips looked. On all 5 brushes some appeared fine tipped and others appeared cut all in the same knot. It might be worthwhile to check a few out as I am puzzled by what I thought I was seeing.

Bob

Just did a quick look with loupe at my TGN & WSP HMWs of same size, same usage, same age and it is easy to see the difference. WSP had way more tapered tips and is denser vs. quite a few looser cut tips of TGN. For me the WSP is softer on my face.

As the saying goes, without the picture it doesn't exist. You have seen just how long it takes to form the bulb shape in the Simpsons video - not long. I'm reserving judgement until I see some evidence - and I mean from the same manufacturer. Those look good quality brushes to my eye.

Originally Posted by jmercer

Just did a quick look with loupe at my TGN & WSP HMWs of same size, same usage, same age and it is easy to see the difference. WSP had way more tapered tips and is denser vs. quite a few looser cut tips of TGN. For me the WSP is softer on my face.

I was just looking at the tips not how dense they appeared to be. Like I said my untrained eye and what I thought I was seeing. So it appears that I just might be mistaken about the tips.

Just to be sure, you are saying the WSP knot had no cut tips or just more uncut tips than the TGN? I am guessing neither should have any cut tips if they were not forming the shape of the knot by cutting.

Bob

Years ago there was a rumor going around that Rooney bleached their FInest knots. Couldn't have been 'that' white otherwise. Rooney of course, denied it, and I doubt that they were bothering with such a practice. Like the other high end volume makers, they had a source for the highest quality badger bristle.

Looking at the Simpson video it seems quite simple, how they form their knots into a consistent shape, bulb or fan. Could you imagine trying to cut/trim a knot into a bulb shape ? Seems to me it would be a fool's errand. How difficult it would be to do it consistently knot to knot. Add to that, the ease with which the knots were formed using the template before tying.

Trimming the bottom makes perfect sense, and will not effect the performance of the knot, the feel on the skin, in any way. I've felt TGN knots on my face, and I've felt the aforementioned high end knots. You get what you pay for, but the TGN ain't bad at all IME. Nice for the price. IMHO.

So where does two band hair fit in? Is it still considered Silvertip badger hair, just from a different part of the badger? At the same time, does this make hairs such as "high mountain white" and "manchurian" nothing more than a marketing ploy? Very interesting information, good detective work.

Originally Posted by prodigy

So where does two band hair fit in? Is it still considered Silvertip badger hair, just from a different part of the badger? At the same time, does this make hairs such as "high mountain white" and "manchurian" nothing more than a marketing ploy? Very interesting information, good detective work.

Tell you from my experience with a heck of a lot of brushes ...... I've had the Somerset made Simpson Manchurians and was leery about the Manchurians the Vulfix/Simpsons were selling. I went for one, and was so pleasantly surprised I got another. They are as good, if not better, at least my two are.

The old Rooney Finest and the Plisson HMW are equally good, though the Finest is somewhat different. Those brushes were the best feeling (on my face) brushes I've ever used. Someone else might not like that particular feel on their face, but for me they are the best.