Tinkering with my first brush

I have been wanting to make a brush and actually posted about it shortly after I got started DE shaving with soap/brush.

I have been in the garage doing other projects and went off on a tangent a couple times to tinker with some scrap maple from a piece I made a few years ago.

I've always loved the look of the Thater handles so that's where the inspiration for this came from.

Started by squaring up the stock and then cutting off the corners.



Traced a rough outline and made a stencil/pattern from it.I traced this on opposite angled faces and then just roughed it out with the nose of a combo belt/disc sander. The horizontal lines were just to keep me from going too far up or down while shaping it.





I did 4 opposing sides with the guidelines and then did the "in-between" sides by eye.

I'm going to borrow my neighbor's drill press to bore a 1" knot hole, maybe 15 or 20mm deep, and a pilot for a mandrel (cut off lag screw). Then my plan is to spin it in a drill while I use the belt sander to round off the top and bottom circumferences and have that blend to the sharper corners on the concave sides.

The concave starts so low because the diameter is a little small for a 24mm knot to fit already and I didn't want to break through when I bore the hole that deep. I face lather almost all the time so I'm hoping to get it set in the 48mm range. This will be my first badger so I'm not sure exactly what I'll like yet. I figure I can always trim the top and re-round it later if I prefer a little more loft.

Not sure what I'll get for a knot just yet.

Just felt like sharing.

That's looking pretty good.

That promises to be a very elegant brush.

Mickey

Thanks for the nice words, guys. I'll probably be slow but will update with progress when there is any.

That's going to be one very nice brush handle.

That is a good start! If you are shooting for a loft of 48mm with a TGN 24mm Finest you may need to drill a little deeper than 20mm. I would be tempted to leave the facets in the necked down area and round the top and bottom.

GolFisHunt said:

That is a good start! If you are shooting for a loft of 48mm with a TGN 24mm Finest you may need to drill a little deeper than 20mm. I would be tempted to leave the facets in the necked down area and round the top and bottom.

Click to expand...

TGN Lists them as 24x67mm, I was thinking I'd drill 20mm deep and that would get me to a minimum of 47mm loft.

Do they actually measure a little taller than 67mm? I was thinking that was from the tips to the base of the plug, is it actually to the top of the plug instead?

I know I should have the knot in-hand before I do that part, not sure if I can be patient enough though.

I'll have to admit that I haven't measured one of these knots before I installed it, so I don't know if they are different than advertised. I have used three of these knots and drilled the hole to about 20mm. After a few trials with the knot set with silicone, I ended up using a quarter (2mm+/-) to raise the knot for a loft of 52mm. The epoxy does take up a little room as well and sanding the top lip of your handle may reduce the depth. If you only have room for 20mm of hole, by all means, stop there and try out the knot at whatever loft it comes to, it may be spot on. If it does not set deep enough, you may be able to sand a mm or 2 off of the bottom of the knot base. It's just easier to adjust up than adjust down if you have the room for the deeper hole.
I hope this does not sound overly preachy, just a friendly heads up. Getting the knot before you drill is advisable but patience has never been one of my virtues either.

Not preachy at all, thanks for clarifying. I wasn't sure if I was missing something.

I definitely plan to use silicone to test it at some different lofts like you did too.

I'd say that you're off to a great start, Heath! I'm looking forward to seeing the finished handle.

Small update but figured I'd post anyway.

I needed to borrow something from my neighbor so took the handle with me to bore a hole. I'm not thrilled with how it came out but it isn't too bad. Ended up 21.5mm deep with no sign of breaking through at all. Should give me plenty of space to set it really low and see how I like it at different lofts.

That's a nice looking handle.

Just an idea here, but if you have a dremel and if you can draw the square oval-ish pattern that the Thater brushes have. You should be able to carve out the grooves pretty easy with the dremel.

That's nice looking. Are you going to round it off or leave the edges? I kinda like it with the edges.

My plan was to round the bottom for sure. The top corner too, not sure what I'm planning to do down the straight sides where the knot sits. The concave Sharp corners will stay for sure.

Mr.Lara, can you explain or show me what you mean?

sorry, i may not have explained myself as well as is thought.

So i went ahead and tried it on a small piece of wood a few minutes ago.

Draw the pattern on the sides that you want from the thater brush (i guess it's somewhat oval)

Putting all the pics in spoiler tags because they are huge.

Thater brush pattern:

Draw pattern on the piece of wood:

Couldn't take video, but to get the groove/indent. Just use the dremel to carve it out.

and you end up with this:

then you can use a small piece of sandpaper to smooth it out.

Thanks for the explanation and demonstration!

I haven't held a Thater brush so I'm not sure, but to me they looked flat but curved inwards, which is what I did on my brush handle. When I rounded the corners I was expecting to get a look very similar to the Thater shape.

Another quick update, I'm not totally decided on the top portion to leave it as-is or round it all the way down to the concave section. I think I'm leaning towards leaving it right now but that could easily change.



It's more obvious now that it isn't as symmetric/uniform as I had hoped it would be, but I think once the knot goes in it won't be so noticeable unless you're looking for it.

It feels pretty good in my hand and I got that Thater sort of shape/design that I was going for so I'm pretty happy with it.

I can't make out anything to be unhappy with. It looks great!

Definitely looking great! A challenging design executed very well so far! Looking forward to seeing the final project!

Very nice.