Ruby and Black Century Restoration

Finished my restoration of this small Ruby and Black Century Brush. I was interested in this one for the clear Ruby bottom portion of the handle, just caught my eye. It was different and I like different!

The old knot was in bad shape and shedding badly so it had to go. The opening was only 16mm so I enlarged it to accept an 18mm silvertip that I had from a ebay vendor I tried for the first time, mimi121205. The knot had arrived about a week before and looked pretty good. I don't normally like knots this small but this one was pretty dense and seemed to have good backbone so thought I'd try it.

There were a few minor marks on the Ruby section that I just polished out. The black upper section required a little spot sanding which preserved the lettering nicely. Repainted the letters and then final polish which produced a nice shiny finish.

I then epoxied the knot in. I usually use silicone but since the knot was small and there wasn't much room in the handle for what I thought would be a good all around silicone seal, I elected for epoxy.

Before and after shots;

Wow!

That is gorgeous. I would never have looked at the before and had the foresight to imagine the after.

Came out really well.

Nice work!

Outstanding. I love the old translucent base handles (Lucite, I think?), and that deep ruby color is pretty uncommon in my experience. Older vintage brushes seem like they are virtually all smaller knots, and it is sometimes a challenge to come up with replacement knots that will fit. I have used some knots as small as 16mm and have found performance to be generally quite good, and I do like maintaining the original proportion of a cool old brush. Yours looks awesome with the 18mm silvertip. Beautiful job on the restore

One of the prettiest brushes , great resto job !

Excellent resto, it looks great!

Beautiful work, it looks amazing!

That's a beautiful brush. I really have a love for the lesser known vintage manufacturers.

Very nice! I love the translucent bases, and have a few, but I haven't found a ruby one yet. I'll have to keep looking.

Lovely brush. Would love to know what you think of the knot post-use as well.

Thanks for all the replies. I too like the unusual and lesser known manufacturers and unique designed type of handles. You see tons of the big names and they make great restoration projects. For my personal collection I've tried to find something unique and different.

The 18mm knot really surprised me. Most of my other brushes have 24mm and larger knots so I didn't think I was going to like this one because it was small in my opinion. It really works very well on both hard and soft soaps. I've only used it 3 times so far so it isn't really broken in yet. I've tried TOB Grapefruit, Tabec and Stirling Glacial Spearmint, all with great results. I was especially surprised with the performance on the Tabec. Gave me a great lather for my normal 2 pass shave and there was plenty left over.

I think most knots were smaller in those days and maybe that wasn't a bad thing. I've found the glue bump on the new knots is slightly larger than on the old vintage knots. I think that gives the new knots a little more backbone than some of the older knots that I've found to be very floppy.

We should have a post for the most unique vintage handle!