Thread: Pairing Brushes

Yes, my current set up:

- My badgers with Martin de Candre. Dead easy, 100% every time. And anyway Plisson HMWs/ Simpson Manchurians deserve Mdc

- Boars with creams. I find boar brushes the trickiest to use (compared to badgers and synthetics) but I love the firmness and barbershop thing. Creams remove the guesswork for me with boar brushes.

- Synthetics with everything else (although they can do Mdc and creams too!). Of the three, I find synthetics are the top 'performers' in terms of lather making and versatility with any soap or cream and they're ideal for travel but I do find they lack soul.

I've tried the hard brush/hard soap and soft brush/soft soap thing in the past but since the arrival of modern synthetics I gave this up (i.e. my soft synthetics will get me the best result with my hard, triple-milled soaps).

My favorite brushes are 28 - 30mm Shavemac or Thäter 2-Bands, which I use with soaps in large mouthed containers, or after applying a light coating of cream to my face and face lathering. I'll use my 24mm brushes with soaps in smaller jars. However, I've been enjoying boar brushes lately, and primarily use them with triple milled and very hard soaps. Any brush will work, however, with any soap or cream. Some of the newer synthetics perform about as well as any of my far more expensive badger brushes, and most boar brushes are even less expensive.

I have a few specific reasons for some parings.

Larger brushes for SR shaving because I need 3 passes of lather vs 2 passes DE.

Romera manchutian with Nuavia Blu, because best brush with best soap.

Muhle synthetic with Mystic Water soap, because it works better than badgers for MW.

I have a number of different brushes and a growing collection of soaps and while I have a tendency to pair them it is based upon emotion as opposed to performance. There is one exception to this, there is a soap that I particularly enjoy but that can cause some skin sensitivity issues. In that one case I will always reach for a synthetic brush. Based on some experimentation I find that a brush without scritch, combined with a cold water shave (pretty much daily standard except in the dead of winter) goes a long way to avoiding sensitivity issues for me.

Yes I do. I pair any one of 15 brushes with 3 different soaps.
1. MDC Lavender
2. MDC Fourgere
3. MDC. Rose

Tc

Gentlemen,
I no longer use badger brushes. Synthetics only. Twelve of them. Soaps or creams make no difference: whatever brush strikes my mood.

Aloha!

I'm a big fan of Synth brushes too. They are just SOOOOO easy to work with and they work great for buffing up lather. That being said, as a mega-fan of wet shaving in general, of course I have Badger, Boar, and Horsehair as well.

To answer the OP's question, I only pair one brush and one cream. I like my Synth brush(es) with Cremo shaving cream. I face lather Cremo and with a Synth brush, I seem to get the best results for building lather. Of course, YMMV, so no debate intended here. Others may argue that they can get better lather with Cremo on the face with a Badger or stiff Boar, but for my money, I pair Cremo with the Synth brushes.

That's it. All other soaps and creams get whatever brush strikes my fancy that day!

Mahalo gents!

-Zip

I have a variety of brushes. When pairing brushes to soaps and creams, I use a couple of criteria. For shaving cream in a tub or tube, I usually pick a floppy badger brush. I only use my boar brushes with hard soaps. I have some synthetic brushes, horse hair brushes, and densely packed badger brushes that will work with most anything, but are especially good with croaps and softer soaps. Another criteria is brush size (knot diameter and loft). Some soaps seem to need more soap loading; so I will pick a larger brush for those.

I do. I like a brush with a little more backbone when lathering hard or less soluble soaps, like a Simpsons Super Badger, Manchurian, or a 2-band. When I'm using creams, I like a softer brush just for a certain luxurious feeling. Lathering up a big gob of AdP with my huge soft Simpsons 59 best or Rooney 3/2 with the atomic bloom is just decadent.

Cheers, Steve

Yes, absolutely.

I use both my 22mm Plisson #12 in Pure Black Badger and "John Bull" (22mm Rooney 1/1 in Super Badger) for soaps and hard[er] creams*, while the matching Rooney 1/1 in Finest Badger is strictly for soaps; "Frank" (a 14mm Sterling-silver in Silvertip Badger) is reserved solely for "regular" creams.

* The best examples of "hard[er] creams" are those from Castle Forbes. I would put those from Cyril R. Salter at a not-too-close second.