When Boar is Just a Pig.

[Brutus]

‘boar’, defined as:

1. The wild boar.
2. An uncastrated male pig.
3. The adult male of any of several mammals, such as a badger, raccoon, or guinea pig.
4. The uncastrated male of swine; specifically, the wild hog.
5. A wild boar, the wild ancestor of the domesticated pig.
6. A male pig.
7. An uncastrated male hog.

In my mind, I always thought that bristles for the humble boar shaving brush came from domesticated pigs.
Even when unbleached, they were lighter in colour than what I saw on the back of wild boars that roamed around one of the places where I used to live.
It seems, however, that some of us are convinced that boar brushes come from wild boars.

I never believed that Chinese hunters chase wild boar to harvest the bristles or that the bristles came only from male pigs. Neither of these ideas made much sense to me.


But curiosity made me write to a renown Italian shaving brush maker and this is what they told me (translated from Italian):


Good Morning,
We answer in Italian (your translation is perfect). Our bristle shaving brushes {penelli} are made with bristles of domestic farmed pigs.
Boar bristle is very hard and is not suitable for shaving brushes. The boar bristle is used to make {other} brushes {spazzole}.
Best regards and happy new year


They used two Italian terms in the original e-mail
- ‘pennelli’, shaving or paint brushes
and
- ‘spazzole’, objects with bristles, wire, hair etc for cleaning, scrubbing etc.




I thought this might be of interest to you.




B.

 

[Mitzie]

That explains why Omega boar brushes are softer than other very cheap boar brushes

 

[Rhody]

Thanks for sharing. I’ll use a semouge boar today!

 

[Mr. Shavington]

That explains why Omega boar brushes are softer than other very cheap boar brushes

Surely all ’boar’ shaving brushes are made with domestic pig hair. The differences in softness would be due to the grade of hair used, the density and loft of the knot, whether the ends of the hair are natural or cut, etc. I’m with the OP and I can’t believe any shaving brush would use hair from wild boars.

 

[Mr Konrad Dundee]

La setola di cinghiale è molto dura e non è adatta ai pennelli da barba. Con la setola di cinghiale si fanno {altri} pennelli {spazzole}.

exactly, with the wild boar bristle we make brushes for painting, where the bristle must be less elastic and more resistant

this is a "spazzola" wild boar brush

BRDS Grooming beard brush boar bristle size l | Rasoigoodfellas

Beard Brush BRDS Grooming. Here you can find the widest selection of BRDS Grooming branded products. Same day shipping. Payment in 3 installments.

www.rasoigoodfellas.eu

 

[Stainsor]

From a manufacturing/production perspective, there is a much larger supply of hair from castrated males and unbred females compared to just uncastrated males.

I don't have any inside knowledge about brush making. But my father-in-law is a pig farmer so I have a little bit of visibility into that industry. And I know that the vast majority of the domestic swine population is made up of market hogs, which includes castrated males ("barrows") and unbred females ("gilts"). The barrows and gilts are not typically separated on the farm or in the processing plant. So I suspect a lot of the hair in those brushes came from female pigs.

The number of uncastrated males (boars) and females that have been bred (sows) is much smaller. They both live longer so they both develop more coarse hair than their unbred counterparts.

As far as wild pigs ("feral hogs"), they are never castrated (obviously) so the males are all boars. They are an invasive species in the midwestern USA (where I'm from). I have heard of various efforts to control the population (encouraging hunting and direct government intervention) but it can be difficult. And as far as I know, none of those efforts include harvesting hair. In fact, I think it's rare to even harvest the meat from feral hogs.

Again, I'm not an expert on the subject, but that's what I know/think.