Tell me what I've got (part 3, brushes)

See part 1 and part 2

Unlike straights or SEs, I am not completely clueless regarding brushes, but these ones are out of my realm of experience.

Front: Trademark / Never Shed / Pat. February 14, 1905
Back Left: Bristles Set in Rubber N E (in a diamond) Y
Back Right: appears to be bone and horn. no markings

The Back Left brush is marked set in rubber, but feels like painted wood to me. The bone part of the bone/horn brush has a crack all the way through it. In addition, the top and bottom portions are separated. Is it possible to repair the bone? Any of these brushes worth doing anything with?

Thanks for all the help guys.

They all look worthy of restoration to me. I would use epoxy on the bone brush handle. I think it would work for filling the crack and for attaching the two parts together.

I demand closeups of the bone/horn brush.

"Set in Rubber" refers to the way the brush is filled/the stuff holding the knot in place, not the handle material.

As requested, more pics of the bone and horn handled brush. I'm obviously just guessing that this is bone, I don't have much experience with it. I do have some experience with real ivory, and don't remember it being like this but don't have any handy to compare it to. This thing is pretty tiny. Handle is 22mm wide at bottom, 16mm at grip ring, and 38mm tall. Knot is 16mm with 37mm loft. I would really like to be able to do something with it as it is quite cool looking, but not sure about fixing that bone.

You can see the crack here. It goes all the way from the top to the bottom and around the edge to the bottom and is cracked all the way through to the inside.


There is a big hole in the middle of the knot where the hair is partially cut off, and partially twisted up into knots.


The bottom of the handle had a small square of white athletic tape on it with a few unreadable initials. I removed the tape, but haven't got around to removing the leftover goo yet. You can also see the crack on the top edge.


Here are the two pieces separated. you can see they have ridges/threads and the whole thing is held together by very brittle, transparent, orange adhesive of some sort.

That is a really cool brush. I'd definitely mend that crack and restore that brush. I'd guess that's ivory rather than bone based on what I can make out of the grain pattern.

The other two I probably wouldn't restore, but only because I don't like vintage wood handles (just a personal preference thing). They both could be restored if you like them though, and the white one looks like all it'd need is a new knot and it's done.

So I restored the horn/ivory brush. It didn't go as smoothly as I wanted and aesthetically it didn't turn out exactly as I was trying for, but performance wise it is actually pretty great. Fantastic little face latherer.

After I removed the old knot and glue I went to work repairing the ivory. I took a file to the inside of the ivory (where it isn't visible) and filed like crazy to get a small pile of ivory dust. I packed this into the crack, and then dripped a drop or two of super glue on it, let it dry, and then repeated the process 2 more times. When completely filled, I filed and sanded the crack smooth again. I was hoping by doing it this way, I could match the color of the ivory and have an invisible repair, but no such luck.

The original joint between ivory and horn wasn't square so I had to file and sand a bit on the horn to get it to meet flush with the ivory. The result of the sanding and one slip of the sander that I had to then fix, was that the entire horn section is about 1.5 mm shorter than it was.

I put in a 16mm Finest knot from TGN. It is set at 48mm. My plan was to set it at 44mm, but directly above the plug, the knot flares out to about 18mm and it is rock hard (I am assuming glue wicked up into it while the knot was being built), so I was unable to set it any deeper. Fortunately, because of the glue in the knot, the bottom 4mm doesn't flex at all so the end result is the same as if it were set in 4 mm deeper.

End results, handle is 22mm at base, 16mm at grip ring, 36mm tall. Knot is 16mm and 48mm loft. I've tried it a few times (including with the fantastic sample of Klar Kabinette I got from Bullgoose) and it face lathers like a dream.

Dang, I found this thread 8 years too late and the OP has been gone since 2011.

For historical purposes, I believe the OP's brush was an Ever-Ready 1612W made with Bone and Horn, with Pure White French Bristles.


I also believe my brush to be the 1612M, also made with Bone & Horn, but Mixed Badger Bristles.

REV579 said:

Dang, I found this thread 8 years too late and the OP has been gone since 2011.

For historical purposes, I believe the OP's brush was an Ever-Ready 1612W made with Bone and Horn, with Pure White French Bristles.
View attachment 927359

I also believe my brush to be the 1612M, also made with Bone & Horn, but Mixed Badger Bristles.
View attachment 927348 View attachment 927352
View attachment 927349 View attachment 927350 View attachment 927351 View attachment 927347

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Does appear to be a match!

Just curious how you stumbled into this old of a thread with pertinent info?

Clay S said:

Does appear to be a match!

Just curious how you stumbled into this old of a thread with pertinent info?

Click to expand...

The terms "Bone" and "Horn" in a search of this sub-forum ended up being a "Lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path."

REV579 said:

The terms "Bone" and "Horn" in a search of this sub-forum ended up being a "Lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path."
View attachment 927389

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Ahh, you were looking for posts about your brush, or a similar one.

I love it when these old threads are brought back to life. Thank you @REV579

ajkel64 said:

I love it when these old threads are brought back to life. Thank you @REV579

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The search function is a good thing. I wanted to PM the guy, but he’s been inactive for 7 years...
it is cool to read the early threads, I wish there were more images saved from the early days of the forum.

REV579 said:

The search function is a good thing. I wanted to PM the guy, but he’s been inactive for 7 years...
it is cool to read the early threads, I wish there were more images saved from the early days of the forum.

Click to expand...

Thank you for reviving the thread, brotherman. I to have learned a lot from the archives.

You could still send him a PM and see what happens. If he is still around he might get the alert in his emails, see it an come back to the forum. You never know.