AimlessWanderer
Remember to forget me!
Pure Badger has a bad reputation. The internet would have me believe that it's cheap for good reason, eternally scratchy, and is not particularly dense.
It's also my favourite badger hair.
Eternally scritchy? Well, maybe some brushes are, but I haven't found the scritch level to be static on any of the pure brushes I have spent time with. Mine have also all been far more pleasant to use than my Omega 11047 Mixed Scritchet. That thing feels like trying to lather with a fist full of sharpened pencils, and was relegated to a keyboard duster, and general cleaning brush.
The pure badgers I have spent time with, have followed a common trajectory in terms of scritch. If I take that Mixed Scritchet as a 10/10 In terms of discomfort, my scrubbiest pure badgers have started off around a 6 or 7 on that scale. But then after a while, they get worse.
As the knots started to break In, and some hair started to yield sooner than the rest, the remaining quills could get a bit brutal for a while. A couple of rhe brushes crept up to an 8 or 9. Still not as bad as the Omega, but close. However, that has tended to be short lived (maybe a dozen or so shaves), and the scritch slowly diminished back down to a 6, or maybe even a 5, and are continuing the break in further.
That's with the scrubbiest ones.
These are all my pure badger brushes. Four of them are scrubby to the extent I just described above. Four of them either went through, or are still going through, that same kind of break-in curve, but are arriving at an even lower scritch level. They are quite lofty for their knot diameter though, which probably helps. The two Beaufort brushes are now kind of what I expected best badger hair to feel like (more on that below), but the peak scritch on one of them was (for a while) at least as bad as the mixed Omega, although only for maybe half a dozen shaves, before eventually settling down to a wonderful moderate scrub level, with a far more gentle scritch.
My final two pure brushes have about as much scritch as my Edwin Jagger super badger, which pretty much means I can feel scritch if I rub the dry brush on my dry face, but it's almost disappeared by the time it's full of lather. There is still a "presence" to the two brushes, rather than being a gossamer cloud, but I would be hard pressed to call it scritch.
For comparison, here are my Best Badger brushes.
Aside from the Wee Scot, which is a near spineless piece of brush shaped fluff, the Simpson's in this pic are far more scrubby than their pure badger counterparts in the first pic. The flow through on these isn't as good as the pure either, and (at least at this stage in their lives) they are far more likely to scour my face raw. In fairness though, they're not "stabby" like the pure brushes sometimes were at peak scritch. My Berkeley 46 in best, has a particularly vicious scrub, though again, not stabby. I haven't tried the Jagger one yet, as it is a very recent addition.
I am not going to try and say that all pure badger brushes are kind to the face, but I can only report on my experience, and more than half of mine are very pleasant to use, and even the scrubbiest of the others are kinder than my scrubby best badger brushes. I am sure there'll be many more "fist full of sharpened pencils" pure brushes out there, but my experience with this hair grade has been largely positive, and all produce excellent lather, and offer very good flow through too.
As for the supersoft badger brushes that have come my way, I would rather use a synthetic most of the time. At least that way, I am assured some semblance of backbone to accompany the supersoft tips.
It's also my favourite badger hair.
Eternally scritchy? Well, maybe some brushes are, but I haven't found the scritch level to be static on any of the pure brushes I have spent time with. Mine have also all been far more pleasant to use than my Omega 11047 Mixed Scritchet. That thing feels like trying to lather with a fist full of sharpened pencils, and was relegated to a keyboard duster, and general cleaning brush.
The pure badgers I have spent time with, have followed a common trajectory in terms of scritch. If I take that Mixed Scritchet as a 10/10 In terms of discomfort, my scrubbiest pure badgers have started off around a 6 or 7 on that scale. But then after a while, they get worse.
As the knots started to break In, and some hair started to yield sooner than the rest, the remaining quills could get a bit brutal for a while. A couple of rhe brushes crept up to an 8 or 9. Still not as bad as the Omega, but close. However, that has tended to be short lived (maybe a dozen or so shaves), and the scritch slowly diminished back down to a 6, or maybe even a 5, and are continuing the break in further.
That's with the scrubbiest ones.
These are all my pure badger brushes. Four of them are scrubby to the extent I just described above. Four of them either went through, or are still going through, that same kind of break-in curve, but are arriving at an even lower scritch level. They are quite lofty for their knot diameter though, which probably helps. The two Beaufort brushes are now kind of what I expected best badger hair to feel like (more on that below), but the peak scritch on one of them was (for a while) at least as bad as the mixed Omega, although only for maybe half a dozen shaves, before eventually settling down to a wonderful moderate scrub level, with a far more gentle scritch.
My final two pure brushes have about as much scritch as my Edwin Jagger super badger, which pretty much means I can feel scritch if I rub the dry brush on my dry face, but it's almost disappeared by the time it's full of lather. There is still a "presence" to the two brushes, rather than being a gossamer cloud, but I would be hard pressed to call it scritch.
For comparison, here are my Best Badger brushes.
Aside from the Wee Scot, which is a near spineless piece of brush shaped fluff, the Simpson's in this pic are far more scrubby than their pure badger counterparts in the first pic. The flow through on these isn't as good as the pure either, and (at least at this stage in their lives) they are far more likely to scour my face raw. In fairness though, they're not "stabby" like the pure brushes sometimes were at peak scritch. My Berkeley 46 in best, has a particularly vicious scrub, though again, not stabby. I haven't tried the Jagger one yet, as it is a very recent addition.
I am not going to try and say that all pure badger brushes are kind to the face, but I can only report on my experience, and more than half of mine are very pleasant to use, and even the scrubbiest of the others are kinder than my scrubby best badger brushes. I am sure there'll be many more "fist full of sharpened pencils" pure brushes out there, but my experience with this hair grade has been largely positive, and all produce excellent lather, and offer very good flow through too.
As for the supersoft badger brushes that have come my way, I would rather use a synthetic most of the time. At least that way, I am assured some semblance of backbone to accompany the supersoft tips.
) for a while. Then, accidentally discovered this thread yesterday. This prompted me to get one of my Pure Badgers out. It's the last one I used and that was nearly three years ago! I really enjoyed it today, it's great for accurate swirling and painting on the face and neck, and it has excellent scrub (but no scritch). Cheers Al.
