Shave Brush Restoration

I recently rewatched a video from Kensurfs (two actually) where he restored a vintage Ever-Ready shaving brush. I was so impressed that I decided to try my hand at it.

I logged in to ebay.com and searched for Ever-Ready shaving brushes. I located a really nice Ever-Ready 150 cream over red vintage brush and bought it. As you can see, there was a stain or something on the cream part of the brush. I hoped the sanding process would take care of it. When the brush arrived, I inspected it and then set it aside for the weekend. On Sunday, I got started.

The first thing I did was cut away the old knot. Everyone says to use some good scissors but the only pair we have are used for my wife’s jewelry business. So I improvised and used some garden trimmers. They worked a treat!

Then I took the Dremel with a drill bit and started boring out the knot.

I switched to different bits and took my time with cleaning out the rest of the knot.

My plan was to use the knot of a brush that had split on me but it has a collar on it that I can’t remove without damaging the knot. So I decided to order one from MaggardRazors. I went with the 20mm synthetic knot.

Now that the knot had been addressed, I wanted to sand down the seams. But, instead of following Ken’s method to the letter, I chose to follow a different path. After using the Dremel for the heavy lifting, I took a clue from Steve at rebornpipes and purchased some Micro-Mesh sanding pads which range from 1500 grit to 12000 grit. I’ve watched Steve use these pads to bring the stems of old and neglected briar pipes back to life. He does truly amazing work. I knew, then, that using those pads would work wonders on the handle of this brush! Taking my time, I used every other pad — 1500, 2400, 3500, 6000, and 12000 — and alternated between dry and wet sanding. The results turned out better than I expected, especially after the way it started out!

With the sanding and polishing finished on the handle, I turned to assembling the knot with the handle. I went down to a local hobby shop and purchased some E6000 Craft adhesive. We’ve used this before and it’s a fantastic product. It bonds to pretty much anything and is waterproof! Since the handle is hollow, I decided to add some weight to it by using some spare washers.

I filled the handle about ¼ of the way with the E6000 and dropped in some washers. I then tapped the handle on the table to let the washers settle and added a little more E6000. Then, taking some sand paper, I roughed up the inside edge of the handle and the glued end of the knot. I inserted the knot and twisted it a little bit to get it adhere well with the handle. Then I just let it cure for a couple of days.

I think it turned out pretty well for my first go!