What's new

StrongSet Restoration

Picked up this little StrongSet brush at a local shop for $1. I liked the Art Deco pattern and I figured it would make a good first restore project. Starting a thread on it just to show how it went.


It was pretty dirty and grubby and the knot was definitely pretty dang gross.

View attachment 633768 $Brush_Back.jpg


They weren't lying about it being a strong set. I drilled out the middle of the knot and tried to use pliers to pull out what remained and ended up using a dremmel to cut the remains of the knot out. The well measures 25mm at the top and looks to taper down to about 23mm at the bottom. I may remove more to get the replacement knot to have less loft, but I want the knot in hand before I remove anything else.

$Brush_Knot_out.jpg

Now to pick the replacement knot...
 
Ordered a 22mm boar knot from VS. After patiently waiting a few weeks, it finally arrived today and I did a little more work to the shelf and got the knot mounted.

I can't wait to give it a try tomorrow once the adhesive cures.

$Brush_Done.jpg
 
How did the shave turn out?

It was awesome! I used Proraso Red and it was a little lather monster. It will be fun to watch as it breaks in to see how much better it gets. VS sure seemed to do a good job on getting the funk out of this one because there was absolutely no animal funk to speak up when wetting it up and cleaning out the brush prior to starting the first lather with it.
 
Very nice! The more I see the people here using VS knots the more I want to try one. She seems to be making a decent reputation for her knots.
 
Very nice! The more I see the people here using VS knots the more I want to try one. She seems to be making a decent reputation for her knots.

Yea, so far, I love this little boar knot. It is breaking in very well and creates plenty of great lather and is getting softer every time I use it. One thing I really liked about it is that it really didn't have the animal funky smell at all. A good initial lathering of Arko on the first use and the only thing you can smell now is whatever soap I used last with it.

I've got a VS badger knot on the way which should arrive in the next few days and two more VS boars that should hopefully get here in the next two weeks or so for a couple more restorations that I'm working on.
 
Top Bottom