So I was digging through old forum posts last week, and I found a bunch of threads from 4-5 years ago where guys were discussing the knot and loft sizes of some Simpson brushes. At the time, basically, the only way anyone had any actual info on specs was by looking at Em's Place. Em had calipers and posted the dimensions of the Simpson brand brushes on her site and that was that. Around the same time, Jim started posting Rooney dimensions at Vintage Blades. Today, I can pop onto virtually any shaving store online and find the precise dimensions of most any brush I want. I can order brushes and knots to spec if I want things dialed back a millimeter. I can go to The Superior Shave and see the exact weight, knot, loft, handle height and handle diameter of every individual Simpson he has in stock - not to mention an actual pic of the particular specimen I'm buying. Many guys have their own digital calipers just for this purpose and know the dimensions of their brushes down to a tenth of a millimeter.
A few years ago, there were debates over whether the 3 Ts were reformulating. Today, I can easily find the precise ingredients of every variant formula of most any shave soap or cream that's come down a production line in the past decade. Guys parse palmate percentages and stearic acid is a part of the daily forum vocabulary. We know exactly what we're looking for to determine whether a shave soap or cream will work for us and throw out opinions and speculation about various products' performance based on the formulation listed on the box.
I know the weight of my razor handles and heads. There are guys out there measuring blade gap variation in Merkurs. I even know a few nutballs who weigh their soap pucks to see how much soap they're loading into the brush per shave.
I'm all for curiosity. I'm all for knowledge. I'm all for understanding why a thing works or doesn't. But I'm wondering if it's all just a bit much. I had a Duke 3 in Best from the pre-Vulfix days when I first got into this. Really a great brush, that one, and it did everything I wanted it to. It was soft-tipped and scrubby, dense but not a lather hog. I have no idea what the dimension of its knot and loft were, and if I knew, it wouldn't have lathered any better than it did. At the time, I remember guys offering the opinion that a Polo was a similar knot and loft in a different handle, and I bought one, and it wasn't exactly the same, but damned if it wasn't a great brush that performed close enough to the Duke as to be no different to anyone but a persnickety wetshaver with too much money and time. My LH Super Adjustable shaved me perfectly before I knew what it weighed. I had some Blenheim Bouquet soap that had tallowate listed fifth in the ingredients, but it was the better of my Harris soaps with tallowate listed second. Some stuff just works, you know?
This is top of mind for me for two reasons. The first is that I broke down and bought a Simpson recently. It's too long-lofted, according to the official specs. But it's an incredible brush. By any objective standard, it would be tough to improve upon it. The thing lathers like mad, has excellent backbone, is incredibly dense and holds a ton of lather, releases said lather exactly as it ought to, and feels great on the face. That said, I'm going to be attempting to locate a shorter-lofted specimen. I wish I didn't know that it's supposed to have less loft, because I don't know how my perception is influenced by that knowledge. I only know that I perceive that this brush would be better with 3 or 4mm less loft. In practice, that might hold up, but the truth is, even if I like the brush better, it's not going to outperform what I have.
The second reason I've been thinking about it is the Vintage Blades soap I got last week. I have no idea what's in the soap, how much stearic acid or palmate or anything else, but it lathers very well and has given me several consecutive shaves of absolutely top quality. I imagine if I knew the ingredient list I'd have had a preconceived notion of how it would perform, but instead, I just lathered it up. And it was great.
It can be fun dissecting minutiae, and I love it as much as anyone. I certainly would be hungry for all this knowledge if it wasn't accessible. But it's been nice for the past few days to take this brush and soap to my face everyday, forget what I think I know, and enjoy my shaves.
Regards,
P.S. Yes, I'm aware that I just wrote a multi-screen post about overthinking. I'm embracing the irony.
The math part of my brain never developed beyond knowing if my brush has a knot of 22 and a loft of 60. Beyond that, I'm absolutely lost, and I desperately wish someone would explain the new brush math to me so I can get in on the action again. 