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Monday, July 20, 2015

The No-Rinse Boar-Brush Experiment Begins

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!

2 comments:

  1. Interesting idea. Looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

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  2. I'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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