Lanolin will eat your babies!

Someone recently had some brush discoloration blamed on the Lanolin in MWF. Having used two band brushes for six years and Lanolin products almost as long, this didn't seem sensible to me; thus the test.

Here we have pure, unadulterated lanolin. It's basically the color and texture of whipped honey or a soft caramel.

Here we have a 2009 TGN finest knot, a 2014 TGN finest knot, and an EXTREMELY white HMW knot that if any badger hair ever was bleached, this knot was.

All were rubbed with ~3 grams of lanolin.

We'll rinse them off tomorrow and see the horrors of lanolin toxicity!

Noooooooooo!!! Think of the children!

chamm said:

noooooooooo!!! Think of the children!

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hahahahaha!

Send help. I'm hiding under my desk right now. The brushes have developed sentience. They're marching around my house demanding "Blood for the blood god!" I'm posting this from my shoe.

Cook up some lamb chops and show them who's boss.

Be afraid, be very afraid.

From the look of things, maybe lanolin fumes might produce some form of psychedelic reaction..................Time will tell if that is good or bad!! lol

SliceOfLife said:

Send help. I'm hiding under my desk right now. The brushes have developed sentience. They're marching around my house demanding "Blood for the blood god!" I'm posting this from my shoe.

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Lanolin has been scientifically proven to cause cancer in Siamese cats. It will leave spots on your clean dishes. It'll decrease your libido and your gas mileage, both by 22%. It will steal all of your covers at night and send inappropriate emails to your boss. It will make crumbs all over your dining room table when company is coming over. It will give your cell phone number to that guy at the gym who is always trying to talk to you about a new and exciting business opportunity. It will change the settings on your refrigerator to make all of your beer cans freeze and your ice cream melt. Pregnant women, the elderly and children under 9 should avoid prolonged exposure to lanolin.

Won't someone please think of the children.

chamm said:

Lanolin has been scientifically proven to cause cancer in Siamese cats. It will leave spots on your clean dishes. It'll decrease your libido and your gas mileage, both by 22%. It will steal all of your covers at night and send inappropriate emails to your boss. It will make crumbs all over your dining room table when company is coming over. It will give your cell phone number to that guy at the gym who is always trying to talk to you about a new and exciting business opportunity. It will change the settings on your refrigerator to make all of your beer cans freeze and your ice cream melt. Pregnant women, the elderly and children under 9 should avoid prolonged exposure to lanolin.

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Lanolin brings Amway into your life.

Lions can lay down with lambs. Those badgers better watch out though.

Hahahaha…thanks for doing this….would love to see the results.

I'm suspecting it's specific to the hair. Something that doesn't affect function, so it doesn't get the hair binned, but somehow makes specific hairs porous on some level, allowing them to stain in this way. Since it doesn't affect the brush, the vendor probably doesn't want you to worry and go "Oh no, maybe the hairs will break after I can't return the brush anymore!", so they blame the product you're using. Lanolin is the color of these stains (hell, maybe it is what actually makes up the stain), so it's a logical choice. I really doubt 99.9% of badger brushes will show these stains after using lanolin however. There's just too many people out there with Mike's and MWF and more who aren't seeing this. It's got to be some abnormal quality to the hairs.

SliceOfLife said:

I really doubt 99.9% of badger brushes will show these stains after using lanolin however. There's just too many people out there with Mike's and MWF and more who aren't seeing this. It's got to be some abnormal quality to the hairs.

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That's a fair point…however it did surprise me that after rinsing the brush in question more thoroughly, the discolouration almost disappeared…this lends credence to the theory that something (not necessarily lanolin) was coating and discolouring the hairs…something that can be rinsed away.

Oh, oh! I better stop using it as a post-shave balm, then!

Did you try washing with dawn?

I have use Lanolin in two forms
Here is the first (pure) and here is the second (tube).
I use it in the face or as an additive in soap-creams,here are the results:


No gain at all,only problem with face rinse ant the odor
I hate that smell so i abandon Lanolin for ever !

Interested in the follow up to this.

No staining. Clean as whistles.

My theory: Some 2 band is bleached at the tips. Some 2 band is bleached at the tips and dyed at the band. Some 2 bands with dyed bands will bleed slightly during the first few uses. This dye may settle on rest of the knot, most noticeably on the bleached tips. This should wash out, but it may not be easy and you may never remove it all. It's dye on a bleached hair surface after all.

This theory is based mostly on it making sense, and lanolin not being in anywhere NEAR the concentration necessary to cause that much darkening in any shave soap... ever. Shave soaps flat out wouldn't lather with that much lanolin in them. There's no way this is caused by lanolin. That leaves almost nothing else, other than dye. Maybe the dye came from the handle, I don't work with those sorts of materials, some of our brush making hobbyists may be able to say if it's possible for them to bleed this much (I doubt it is). I think far more likely the guys selling the stuff, wanting to offer a higher grade of hair to meet customers demands for the next big thing, and realizing that bright white tips contrasted with thick dark bands appeal to western customers created a product to meet that demand... and then didn't wash the hair enough times before shipping it out.

The solution? Wash your brushes very, very thoroughly and immediately rinse them several times on arrival, before use. The problem is likely caused by the dye dissolving, flowing down (towards the tips), and sitting there. Possibly even in the initial soak. Don't let that happen. Badgers aren't brittle without a soak the way boars are, you can wash them immediately.