Review: 3 Claveles Professional Horsehair Brush

What kind of shaving brush do you use? Tell us all about it!
brothers
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Post by brothers »

Janus, here is the website. http://www.aceros-de-hispania.com/

The shaving brushes are included under the Scissors category, and then in the sub-category Accessories.
Gary

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Post by blantyre »

95% wrote:I don't know that shaving brushes even existed before 1850 or thereabouts. Does anybody? Someone posted here - it may have been Squire - that he saw a "very ratty brush" in a collection of Civil War memorabilia, perhaps one that belonged to Grant. But did Washington or Napoleon, or their barbers, use shaving brushes? What about Louis XIV?
Grant had a full beard, so a poor quality brush would be all he needed. I think that Napoleon used a Plisson. I'm sure that Wellington would have used a Simpson if they had been around then but they weren't.

Great review of the horse hair brush. Do they hold water only on the surface of the bristles like badger does or are they more like boar that needs a long soak to saturate the bristles themselves?
Rick
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Post by brothers »

blantyre wrote:Great review of the horse hair brush. Do they hold water only on the surface of the bristles like badger does or are they more like boar that needs a long soak to saturate the bristles themselves?
I think the horsehair doesn't need a long soak. It takes whatever water is provided and turns it into lather. I would describe it as a "last in first out" system (referring to the water). It might be accurate to say "more water = more lather". That sounds simplistic, but I think getting too much water would almost have to be intentional.

My brush is forgiving if I dunk it a bit too deeply into the water. Instead of paying a penalty by having the lather too wet, there's a reward of more lather, if I just work the brush a bit longer, the excess water translates into still more lather. This is true more often than not.

Perhaps it matters that I like to amply load my brush no matter whether I'm using cream or soap. I'm not trying to take a penny's worth and turn it into a dollar's worth. I've got plenty to start with, most times.
Gary

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Janus
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Post by Janus »

brothers wrote:Janus, here is the website. http://www.aceros-de-hispania.com/

The shaving brushes are included under the Scissors category, and then in the sub-category Accessories.
Gary, yes, that's the site where I almost bought one a while back, but it doesn't say where they are made.
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Post by brothers »

Janus, I'm guessing they'd respond to an email inquiry.
Gary

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Post by Ecosse »

I don't know, something about rubbing a fly swatter on my face doesn't sit right.
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Post by brothers »

Well said. The deep seated prejudices are quite powerful, though irrational. Even though we are free to do as we please, most of us are simply afraid of appearing to be judged "out of the box" in the silently glaring eyes of those whose fear is not of experimentation, but a deeper fear of losing their control. Even though we are disadvantaged by our scorn of the conventional, we can laugh long and hard in our enjoyment of the forbidden fruit.
Gary

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Post by Fido »

Great stuff Gary!
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GA Russell
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Post by GA Russell »

Well done Gary! Thanks!

But I have a question. I prefer to swirl the lather on my face (in the attempt to get a Santa Claus lather) rather than to paint the lather onto my face.

You only mention painting the lather. Did you try swirling the brush as well, and if so what were the results?
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Post by Lord Ponsenberry Smyth »

brothers wrote:Well said. The deep seated prejudices are quite powerful, though irrational. Even though we are free to do as we please, most of us are simply afraid of appearing to be judged "out of the box" in the silently glaring eyes of those whose fear is not of experimentation, but a deeper fear of losing their control. Even though we are disadvantaged by our scorn of the conventional, we can laugh long and hard in our enjoyment of the forbidden fruit.
My dear fellow,

Might I suggest you put the bottle of Glenfiddich single malt whiskey back in the liquor cabinet and stop horsing round!

Dismissed.
David Ponsenberry Smyth 111. ( Lord )
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Post by brothers »

At 7 am, coffee's about the best thing in the world.
Gary

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Post by Lord Ponsenberry Smyth »

My Dear chap I don't wish to badger you about this but all the horsing around with brushes that your doing is beginning to boar me.
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Post by Lord Ponsenberry Smyth »

My Dear chap I don't wish to badger you about this but all the horsing around with brushes that your doing is beginning to boar me.
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David Ponsenberry Smyth 111. ( Lord )
Advocate for the use of French and Italian soaps.
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Post by brothers »

Hay lordy, you've struck the mane supply it looks like. Please provide a link for this saddle bag of equine shaving loot. I'm chompin' at the bit, bud. "Extra Horse?"(Seriously, man, where did you come across this?) As you can imagine, I've had more than a few inquiries for sources, and this looks like an excellent one. Thanks!

Edit: Never mind! I found it at Vie Long's website under professional horsehair brushes. Thanks though, for finding it. Looks like Vie Long's in Valencia Spain, unless I misinterpreted the map.
Last edited by brothers on Tue Mar 09, 2010 5:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
Gary

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Post by 95% »

Hmmm...those are quite attractive. I wonder what is meant by "extra horse." A superior grade of horsehair?
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Post by drmoss_ca »

Apart from the anthrax issue, the main reason for the disappearance of the horsehair brush has to be the disappearance of the horse. The motor car has many things to answer for. The many horses that went to the knacker's yard each day were recycled into leather, glue, stuffing, plaster for walls, dogfood. bonemeal fertiliser and so on.

Chris
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Post by 95% »

Excellent point, Chris. The advent of the horseless carriage deprived the horse of its main economic value. Those other uses that you mention were secondary to the main one, transportation. Unlike pigs and cattle, horses were never raised for food, so they have largely disappeared from the economy.
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Post by Janus »

Yes, it looks like His Lordship may have answered my question there as well.
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Re: Review: 3 Claveles Professional Horsehair Brush

Post by malocchio »

brothers wrote:Brothers’ criteria for the 3 Claveles Professional Horsehair Brush Review

1. Quality 8
2. Balance 9
3. Luxury Factor 8
4. Ease of Lather 10
5. Price 10
6. Stiffness of tips 3
7. Softness of tips 9
8. Ergonomic 9


Quality: The handle is solid wood with a metal bolster which houses the knot. The brush has only shed 3 hairs during the initial break-in and the first three weeks of almost daily use. The horsehair is cut from longer hair fibers, so the tips of the hairs are going to be square on a new brush.

Balance: The heft is appropriate for a brush model called Professional by the manufacturer. In use, the large knot when loaded with lather and water is nicely offset by the length and weight of the handle.

Luxury Factor: The softness of the horsehair in this brush on the face is very similar to my Kent BK4, and painting the lather on the face is smooth and gentle.

Ease of Lather: This brush is a willing participant in the serious business of doing what it is intended to do. There’s no pampering or babying, no lore or mystery involved. It shows up, collects both of the two ingredients it needs to do what it does, and delivers the lather quickly and efficiently.

The horsehair works for me as easily on soap as with cream. I have used bowl lathering and face lathering with equal ease and success. I use distilled water for shaving. The non-tallow Trumper soaps begin to create lather within 3 to 5 swirls of the soaked and gently shaken horsehair brush on the surface of the soap. In moments the brush is loaded and begins doing what it does best. This is the basis for my satisfaction with my first horsehair brush.

The horsehair doesn’t hold water as well as badger, but it has a natural lathering ability. I have found that the horsehair will take whatever quantity of water you give it and it will create as fine a lather as your cream or soap is capable of providing. If you spare the water, the lather will be thicker. If you go to the water more often, the lather produced becomes more profuse, but I am very impressed by the fact that none of the lathers I have produced with my horsehair brush have been thin and wispy, or watery and weak. The horsehair’s nature is not to hold as much water within itself as the mighty badger brush.

The horsehair gets whatever amount of water it needs from the user. Someone new to the horsehair brush is probably going to find that he needs to dip more than just the tips into the water, and as the lather is created, the horsehair will use whatever water has been provided at a faster rate, since it isn’t “holding” water deep within the highly absorbent bristles, it appears to hold the water on the exterior, where it’s needed at the moment of the release of the lather onto the skin.

A few sentences above, you will recall I referred to a “natural lathering ability”. This may be the horsehair brush’s most important feature. Maybe this explains why horsehair was the dominant fiber used in shaving brushes in the past centuries.

The horsehair doesn’t hoard the massive quantities of lather it creates; it seems ready to release the excess lather about as promptly as it’s created. Painting the incredibly soft hair back and forth, up and down is the power that drives the lather-making engine.

Upon completion of the shave, the horsehair brush does have ample amounts of lather still stored within itself, but in my experience, not as much as a badger brushes. The horsehair makes great lather and gives up its lather more readily.

The process can be described as efficiently mixing water and soap/cream in very little time with very little effort, and delivering the desired consistency and quantity of finished product to the face. That’s what I call getting down to business.

Price: The total cost to me for the brush and the shipping from Spain was a bit over $44 based on the exchange rate for Euros vs. Dollars at the time. Shipping was more than half the total cost. There are few, if any, quality badger shaving brushes in that price range. This is the most expensive of the horsehair brushes I located. My son bought one for $10 plus shipping, and I bought my second horsehair brush for $23. This is undoubtedly due to the current factors of supply and demand.

Stiffness of tips: Not very stiff. The BK4 is not a very stiff brush, and the horsehair brush is very similar to the absence of stiffness inherent in the Kent Silvertip BK4 brush.

Softness of tips: Rated very high for this brush. The horsehair feels lush and luxurious as it creates the lather and deposits it on the face.

Ergonomic: This horsehair brush feels comfortable in my hand while I’m using it, due to the design and the weight.

Discussion: The horsehair rinses and dries rapidly. It aerates freely and easily. After about 7 latherings it loses all factory/manufacturing odors, and quickly takes on the soft pleasing fragrances of the shaving products used. This brush is different. It’s good. It doesn’t take too long to figure out how to use it, and what it’s going to do when you use it.
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,................................................................................................................................................................................................................gary...this is really interesting...thanks for this review,i have been thinking of getting one also....
SiR-ed8

Post by SiR-ed8 »

Gary,

how are they performing? Did you by chance pick up their boar or badger? The latter I'm curious as to what grade it is on the site.
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