Yesterday morning I began using my boar brush once again, but also began the experiment of NOT rinsing the lather out of the brush after the shave. I simply hung it to dry lather and all.
If you missed my earlier articles, I've been doing this with a synthetic brush for a couple of weeks. I know it's herecy to not rinse the brush, but I got this idea from Gillette itself. On the Internet, I saw an image of a Gillette pamphlet from around 1920 that suggested this very practice: that is, don't rinse the brush after the shave and simply let it dry as is.
I've taken my heretical experiment a step further. Since soaking a brush full of lather is going to cause some of the lather to rinse out, this morning I didn't do a pre-shave soak of my boar brush either. I treated it the same way I did my synthetic; that is, laid the side of the knot in my wet hand to dampen the lather so the wispy dried lather didn't float away. Then I ran a little cool tap water directly into the knot, applied soap stick to damp face, and began face lathering. I added water to the brush about five times before I got the desired lather consistency.
That was it. I got a fine pre-work shave. But the question remains: how will the brush hold up over time?
Stay tuned, and happy shaving!
Interesting idea. Looking forward to seeing how it turns out.
ReplyDeleteI've been squeezing the lather out before drying the brush, but I doubt it will end much differently for you. My bristles are softer. Attrition is down. Best of all, I can lather with less product. Seems like leaving the soap in place is just all around better than allowing soap scum to be deposited.
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