On Matters of Silvertip: An Opinion with Pictures

[Johnnie]

It's a shame that this thread started out so good with so much valuable information, then to turn in to an argument. This seems to be a trend lately.

SMF is very liberal when it comes to censorship & membership. This is a public forum not a private forum. If you have any personal beef with anyone I suggest that you handle it in a private matter via PM or Email.

I guess when you get so many personalities in one room there is going to be disputes. However, I think we are all man enough to walk away.

John

[Joe Lerch]

Of this thread, I now can only say: "Goodbye, farewell and Amen"

Ren, I hope you are referring to some of the disputes that have appeared on this thread, rather than my initial post, or the relevant, factual posts that followed. I still like to think the meat of this thread has some merit.

I think it definitely does and it even reached resolution ultimately. I would not want it deleted under any circumstances, and I will do my part to clean it up.

I apologize to the extent that anything I did hijacked your thread or did anything to detract from its substantive content. It was certainly not my intention, and my questions have been resolved to my satisfaction.

[Shogun]

In response to the earlier questions:

I am not currently at liberty to discuss who I manufacture brushes for unfortunately. That is up to the retailer to disclose if they choose.

I have been working on manufacturing shaving brushes for approximately 8 months now so my experience is very limited compared to established firms.

All of my knowledge on the hair comes from personal observations of the hair I have purchased to work with and what I have been able to receive from multiple Chinese suppliers.

My main reason for saying that Silvertip is a marketing term is the fact that there is no industry standard that is adhered to amongst shaving brushes that I am aware of. Unless there is a private agreement amongst the major manufacturers then I don't know where it exists and the fact that many brushes labeled Silvertip appear very different in appearance at times seems to confirm the lack of a standard. In addition to this, every single Chinese firm that supplies badger hair I have contacted and/or purchased from does not know what Silvertip means. I have tried explaining it and it always comes down to them offering me their highest grade hair. All the hair I have purchased is of the highest grade available from a manufacturer since in all the information I have received the lower grades are just various forms of best badger (i.e. hair from the belly or other regions and not the whitened dorsal ridges). In the highest grade the only distinction I have received is length of the hair to order. As I said before there is a longest length they list as offering but requesting longer hair meets with varying information on what is available but it is available. I do have hair that is virtually identical to the material that appears in the brushes that have the extremely thick black band. This hair was the longest hair I purchased and is not always available nor is it listed as available by my supplier; it must be requested. I have lengths from the longest down to what they normally retail in ~10mm increments and you can see the steady progression in band thickness change and tip length with overall hair length. The longest hair is obviously not readily available and rare due to the fact that it is only a very small portion of the animals white tipped hairs. Additionally, probably not all badgers that are pelted are large enough to even have hairs up to a certain length.

As far as the suppliers having no real standard, this comes from my own comparisons of their hair supplied. Yes everyone’s 'best' grade is white tipped, yes it is segregated by length. However, there is no way I can call one supplier and say give me 3 kg Grade A120 or some such label and have them immediately know what I mean nor do I get the same quality hair from each suppliers 'best' grade. Some are more yellowed and less well sorted (i.e. belly hair or something close to the white area creeps in and the tips are of questionable quality on visual inspection). Even bundles from one length batch of the same supplier can exhibit some differences in tint and band length, most likely due to the fact that no badger's hair is identical.

I definitely liked the diamond analogy as applied to hair quailty and agree with it. It clearly shows that a cartel like the diamond industry can set standards since they control the supply. In the case of badger hair there is no cartel unless you count the Chinese government's export controls and they exercise no control over suppliers other than to license them to sell badger hair.

Anyway, I posted because I thought I would try and shed some light on the subject and feel that I have a slightly different perspective since I deal with the hair from a point as close to the pelt as I can without living in China. I think that standards are a great thing and am working myself to try and create some documents to lay some out and create a starting point for people to work from. Everyone wins when we can work from the same page and agree on a standard.

Thanks for all the thoughtful replies and discussion. I'll try and post when I have time although typing up long responses is quite time consuming.

Joe Andrew

[Joe Lerch]

[Robert G.]

Thanks for contributing Joe Andrew. Please continue to post and share your knowledge with us.

[Joe Lerch]

Joe A.:
Thanks for your informative posts. I feel confident that your participation has made this one of the most authoritive threads on silvertip badger brushes that can be found on any board. For that, we should all be thankful.

[Dave T]

What members say in private messages about other members is none of my business, and should be none of other members’ business. Should a member discover something said in the private message from one member to another that he feels is objectionable, he should deal with it privately between himself and the other members and/or the moderators/administrator, either via the private message feature of the forum or personal email.

In the future, I should hope members can report to the moderators/administrator any objectionable messages they receive from another rmember or are aware were sent to another member, and the issue will be dealt with, and it'll be done privately.

Dave T

[Joe Lerch]

What members say in private messages about other members is none of my business, and should be none of other members’ business. Should a member discover something said in the private message from one member to another that he feels is objectionable, he should deal with it privately between himself and the other members and/or the moderators/administrator, either via the private message feature of the forum or personal email. When a member attacks a new member in the fashion we’re told Honk did – and he’s not denying the authenticity of the private message Joe posted – it’s unequivocally unacceptable behavior in my opinion and something the moderators and administrator need to discuss and decide what action to take or not to take in regard to Honk. Whatever they decide, I’ll support, but they need to talk about it. It’s too serious to ignore.

In the future, I should hope members can report to the moderators/administrator such objectionable messages they receive from another rmember, and the issue will be dealt with, and it'll be done privately.

Dave T

I agree totally. I can handle messages appropriately. my only concern was the message to the newbie.

[Sam]

gentlemen: we are a growing community and quite thankfully, we have been free from a lot of strife. it does happen, and i am sure no one means to be off base or rude here. i think we have gotten what needs to be said out into the open and it appears that this was an isolated event. let us then refrain from posting further about any PM's to newbies or other stuff that went off topic. if we need to discuss this, please lets go to forum feedback.

i ask because many people read their inbox trying to keep up with a thread, or the notification that a thread they posted on had been responded to, and then read of members disputes. if something needs to be resolved, please contact the moderator of the forum in which the matters start, and let him bring it to the moderators forum to discuss.

quite thankfully, we have very few disputes. the moderators, as a rule, prefer open discourse and toleration of items that go offtopic. we have had many people come join us and as robert pointed out, were referenced in a british article. vendors keep track of us, which can be a good thing, reference the new vendor seeking input from us on shave soaps. shavemac really gave us a great brush at a great price point. we have discussions of a shave mug by a member, and who knows, maybe we can get great handles to go with a DE head, say a merkur slant bar or something like that.

i want to believe that somehow a poster is trying to be helpful and his written word does not seem harsh to him as he posts it. rather than take umbrage, maybe we can somehow formulate a way to deal with it, say to just send a PM saying that hey, i am taken aback and hope you did not mean anything personally and i will not take it as such. i say inappropriate things, and if called to carpet on it, many times i will apologize as i did not mean to say that (but sometimes, hey, you gotta be plainspoken. i dont think this was the occassion anyone hoped for)

now, having said that, i hope this topic gets back on thread.

sam

[Sam]

well, i have a simpsons catalog that robert from the gentlemens shop asked if anyone wanted one and i did. i am looking at the emperor pics, and they show that it comes only in super badger. they say super is also known as silvertip. the pics show a band under the "black area" of hair that is darker than the top portion but not as dark as the black band. next to it is a picture of the eagle series and that only comes in pure badger. its "black band" is not as black and its top bristles are darker than the emporer. visually, you would not think of the emporer line as the super or silvertip. i dont know that unless u compared one brush in person to the other, you would ever really be satisifed.

sam

[bernards66]

Evening, I have taken the liberty of deleting a few posts that I felt were especially harsh, as well as one or two that alluded in detail to this unfortunate scuffle. As several members noted, this is one of the most informative and detailed threads in the entire SMF archive, and it will remain very useful, I think, in the future. I did not delete more then I felt was necessary. No doubt, it's silly, in one sense, as presumably most members have read the whole thing already, anyway. However, I would just as soon that some of those posts did not remain in the 'permanant record', as it were. My apologies to anyone whose post I deleted, especially to anyone who was planning to delete their own, in any case. I hope that we can let this thread rest, for now.
Regards,
Gordon

[Johnnie]

Gordon,

I think you did what was best for the future of this site. Im sure there will be newbies who will read this in the future and benefit from this. They will not benefit from the bickering.

Good job,
Johnnie

[JackieMartling]

Gordon,

I think you did what was best for the future of this site. Im sure there will be newbies who will read this in the future and benefit from this. They will not benefit from the bickering.

Good job,
Johnnie

Agreed. Thanks, Gordon.

[Gramps]

Yes, I agree too.
Very good job Gordon.

May I suggest that this thread be made a "sticky" as well, for future reference? If it is at the top, then iot will be easily found and Nathan did such a great job assembling the photos and descriptions and the subsequent discussion has added much to the "Silver Tip" debate.

Thank yo to all.

- Gramps

(PS I like the look of the Plisson!)

[JackieMartling]

Larry, which one? My mock-ivory handle, or Peter's horn handle? (You won't hurt my feelings if you choose Peter's. I certainly would!)

[Gramps]

Actually Nathan,
it is Peter's Horn handle that I was referring to. A moot point though as I will never be able to afford one.
They are all lovely brushes and I commend you for your post and comparison. It is truly what we needed here, all in one post. Some of the info, we who have been around a while, and read the various boards could surmise some of the info, from masters like Gordon ... but this post and thread was very much needed.

Thanks again.

- Gramps

[JackieMartling]

Larry, I have to chuckle a bit, because I'm not the least bit surprised you were talking about Peter's brush. I love my Plisson: the hair quality is fantastic, as is the construction, and it does an amazing job lathering up hard soaps. But the handle is BUTT ugly! (My apologies to Steve C., who sold it to me.) It's the one downside to the brush - especially when I see that picture of Peter's majestic looking swan of a brush. Mine's the ugly duckling in comparison. But it's the ugly duckling with a heart of gold, that's for sure.

I also agree with you about being able to surmise some of what I wrote from previous posts by Gordon, and others. Essentially what I was trying to do was condense all the points I had learned from them, with the benefit of my own observations, and add pictures. This is why I took exception to those who had said my "self-formulated" conclusions were faulty. They weren't my own conclusions. This stuff is nothing new - nothing Gordon hadn't gone blue in the face saying however many times, only he didn't have pictures to illustrate his point. And, apparently, we might still go blue in the face, because for some people, the debate will not end. But whatever. It's time to move on with it. Thanks for the good words.

[jvan]

This thread is already on page 5 and growing, what would be nice is if there was a way that all of the pertinent posts could be extracted along with the pictures and placed in a permanent location. What would really be nice is if someone could condence the entire thread into a Silver Tip White Paper that could serve as an illustrated reference source for years to come.

[JackieMartling]

That's a good idea, John. I could do that with my own posts, but I couldn't extract the others' posts. That would be a job for one of the moderators, I think.