Boar brushes popularity

I don't think they require more product, but I'm sure they do require more soaking. 10 minutes is the absolute minimum, provided you use them on a regular basis. If you don't, think half an hour as the minimum, and to be honest, if there is a boar brush I haven't used for some time (make that a couple of weeks, for example), I leave them overnight in cold water, being careful enough to keep the water level at least 1 cm (or 0.75") below the handle. When I'm getting in the shower the next morning, I replace that cold water with warm water, and the brush is more than ready. The reason why boar brush tend to devour our lather or seem to require more product is that the bristles require more hydration. If they're not properly hydrated, they will tend to absorb your lather, hence that feeling that boar brushes need more product or that they "eat" our lather. . Once that is sorted out, they lather just fine. I agree, nonetheless, that a good badger brush, and especially a synthetic, will get your lather ready a bit quicker. You just can't have everything, can you? .

I just wet my boar brushes under running tapwater for 10 seconds or so and start face-lathering even when I haven't used them in many months.  

Well... if it works for you, fair enough . I just followed the instructions of someone that is more knowledgeable than I am, and they worked just fine. No more problems of disappearing lather .

Tudo bien, Ramon. As long as you enjoy your shaves is what is most important.

I don't think they require more product, but I'm sure they do require more soaking. 10 minutes is the absolute minimum, provided you use them on a regular basis. If you don't, think half an hour as the minimum, and to be honest, if there is a boar brush I haven't used for some time (make that a couple of weeks, for example), I leave them overnight in cold water, being careful enough to keep the water level at least 1 cm (or 0.75") below the handle. When I'm getting in the shower the next morning, I replace that cold water with warm water, and the brush is more than ready. The reason why boar brush tend to devour our lather or seem to require more product is that the bristles require more hydration. If they're not properly hydrated, they will tend to absorb your lather, hence that feeling that boar brushes need more product or that they "eat" our lather. . Once that is sorted out, they lather just fine. I agree, nonetheless, that a good badger brush, and especially a synthetic, will get your lather ready a bit quicker. You just can't have everything, can you? .

I just wet my boar brushes under running tapwater for 10 seconds or so and start face-lathering even when I haven't used them in many months.  

Well... if it works for you, fair enough . I just followed the instructions of someone that is more knowledgeable than I am, and they worked just fine. No more problems of disappearing lather .

This appears to have the makings of a brush off - I can take two similar boars and soak one overnight as Ramon_Caratejon describes and the other soak while I'm showering as I normally do and then see if it makes a difference. When you look at old barber's brushes they are almost always boar bristle and those brushes would have been wet for the entire day. I wonder if it effected performance.

I don't give my boars long soaks either. Just a quick wetting and it sits while I get other things ready. Maybe 30 seconds tops, and probably much less. One can take a broken in boar and feel it as it contacts water. It softens and gets pliable rather quickly and that's all you're looking for so as not to snap hairs. The hair bases need to be pliable and nothing more.

There's a great deal of BS "out there" and taken to be fact because someone somewhere said it was so to someone who never checked it out for themselves. Question everything. Want to see it in action? Just look at shaving videos on youtube. Sure there are really good ones, then there are the ones where someone had a video camera and few working brain cells and got a great deal of the info' wrong. How does a noob filter the bad out of the valuable?

FWIW, I treat all of my natural fiber brushes the same way. The only brushes that don't get pre-wet are the synthetics. They don't even get so much as a dip in the sink of water to wet them for the soap loading. I put an amount of water in the soap tub and put the syn' brush in to load. Why? Because they retain too much water and then dump it at the first opportunity. Too much water when loading a brush isn't a good thing. Dry synthetics only (and wet soap) for best results. Synthetics don't respond to pre-wetting anyway. Plastic bristles don't absorb water.

I love my Boar brushes, I use them as my daily drivers most days.

This appears to have the makings of a brush off - I can take two similar boars and soak one overnight as Ramon_Caratejon describes and the other soak while I'm showering as I normally do and then see if it makes a difference.  When you look at old barber's brushes they are almost always boar bristle and those brushes would have been wet for the entire day.  I wonder if it effected performance.

Mark, to be a fair, you should only wet the one brush under running tap-water before use to test out the theories.

Here are my three sisters :



I -still- don't own a proper digital camera so mobile phone pics is as good as it gets. Sorry for that. I understand what you guys say, in the sense that there are different theories, so many so called experts and whatnot, but then you find someone who looks like he knows his stuff, you put in practice some of his advices and they turn out to work well. So, that was it. This guy told me that in order to prevent the boars from munching on my lather, they had to be thoroughly soaked. It worked .

I almost never use the badgers or horsies anymore

... this group photo made me take a head count of the team for the first time

I love the way a boar brush feels, though won't purchase any more of them. There isn't much information about boar bristles and how they are harvested. As best I can determine, they are harvested in an inhumane way. The bristles don't come from hogs about to be slaughtered.

They come from special breeds raised for the purpose of providing bristle. I would be good with them shearing them as they do sheep. The best information I can find is that rip the hair out of the pig as bristles with the hair root bring more money. In light of that, I'm simply not comfortable buying boar bristle brushes.

I'm more comfortable with badger hair. As best I could find, badgers are not farmed and are shot, thus there isn't much suffering.

Of course, horse hair and synthetic brushes are humane and don't require killing anything.

They come from special breeds raised for the purpose of providing bristle.  I would be good with them shearing them as they do sheep.  The best information I can find is that rip the hair out of the pig as bristles with the hair root bring more money.  In light of that, I'm simply not comfortable buying boar bristle brushes.

Boars are my favorite kind of brushes, and I eat all kinds of meat. But I was reading this in my mind during my evening shave today while using my Zenith boar. Not sure how to ignore this :/