Wonders Never Cease

You may have seen this guy before:

He came at about the same time as two other brushes, so I never really talked about him. But it's high time I did...He's got a secret!

I got three brushes all about the same time. The Kim Son Horn Handle Silvertip, which you have read about; the pre-Vulfix Simpsons Duke 3, which has moved on to warmer pastures; and the Omega 21047 Travel Boar brush. That's the little guy on the right--he's got a hand turned acrylic handle, and according to Giovanni at Razor and Brush (who sold me the brush), a 21mm knot and a 47mm loft. The handle has a lovely faux horn look to it, and the whole thing just looks classy.

Now, the first thing I noticed when I got the brush, apart form its tiny size, was the look of the bristles.
Compare this:

To this:


In the Omega picture, the bristles have the look of a typical boar brush, with the fake badger "sketch"-the bristles are the kind of off-white "blonde" of a boar brush. In my picture, though, you can see more of a "brindled" color; there is more brown to it. I thought it was an aesthetic thing, to match the bristles with the handle--and it may well be so. But there is another factor at play here...

When I finally got around to using the brush (thanks, Zach, for reminding me to!) I found something a bit unexpected...

First was the smell. When I got my Omega professional, it frankly reeked. Reeked like a wet dog. That's just part of it--animal hairs smell bad when wet. The badger brushes also smell, though there is a different funk to it. This brush, however, had an odd smell--neither like the Omega professional nor the badger brushes I had used. Somewhere in between. Strange.

Second was performance. This is a boar brush. Boar brushes have a tendency toward low water retention and a slower lather rate than badger brushes; I thought that, due to this brush's smaller size this would even be more of a problem. I was absolutely wrong.

This brush is a lather monster. It took just a few swirls to work both the Cella from today's shave and the TBS Maca root cream from yesterday into a thick rich lather, and the water level was just right...I had to dip only once for each of them. The brush was a bit scritchy, but being a new boar brush that was no problem. It had a good amount of backbone, very massagey feeling, but it also had more splay than I assumed it would from the short loft. It felt good lathering, and it did a great job of it.

The performance was outstanding...and I couldn't understand it. I was sure that such a small boar brush should not be able to hold enough water to work so quickly...But then I looked more closely.



In among the coarse, poker-straight boar hairs I could see finer, somewhat kinky or wavy hairs. Some of them were dark brown to the tips, some of them were banded, some of them were bleached almost white...badger hairs.

This is a boar/badger mix! The website and the Omega catalogue both list this as a boar brush, I know, but the look, the performance, and the smell all seem to agree...this is a mix!

It has the stiffness and scrubbiness of a boar, lending it to work wonders with soaps and creams, and it has the water retention of a badger brush, helping it make the lather more hydrated. It's an awesome brush, and more than worth the $16 or so I dropped on it.

A hearty recommendation, and a very pleasant surprise!