Summer’s here, and it’s sometimes hard to leave the sunshine and spend time in the shop. But recently my shaving brush died, and I needed to replace it. Meanwhile, some students at the high school where I volunteer also wanted to make such brushes, and the question of how to mount them for turning without leaving holes came up. That was all the excuse I needed to turn a brush and talk about the process.
The parts for brush and stand
Shaving with a brush and razor is a vanishing pleasure in this age of electric everything. But it’s very satisfying—a meditative ritual of whirling up a lather in the soap cup and daubing it on. A nice brush is essential to the experience. So start with good parts.
Several places sell the badger hair tufts at the heart of the brush. I got mine from The Golden Nib, which carries a selection of sizes and qualities. The one in this brush is a 22mm “Super Silvertip”. I also ordered a chromed brush stand and a turning blank for the handle.
Shaving brushes get wet. A lot. If you apply a film finish to a solid wood handle, it will eventually fail with water penetrating small cracks. Varnish lasts longer than shellac or lacquer, but it’s not waterproof. That’s why I opted for a Dymondwood cocobolo blank, also from The Golden Nib. This is a manmade product that looks like cocobolo, but is impregnated with plastic so it requires no finish to look beautiful.
First, turn a tenon
Let’s turn it.
We’ve got to grab one end of the blank in a chuck so we can drill the brush tuft hole in the other, and you can build a problem into your project right at this stage if you go about it wrong. The blank will certainly fit into chuck jaws as is, but it won’t be very stable. Also, since the end may not be square to your turning axis, you may wind up mounting the block at an angle. So the first thing to do is to mark the center at each end, mount the blank between centers on the lathe, and turn a small tenon on one end. The chuck will grab this tenon, and the tenon’s shoulder will bear against the tops of the jaws to provide stability.
Drilling the brush tuft hole
The next step is to drill the hole for the brush tuft. Look at the epoxy button on the base of the tuft and drill your hole deep enough that it won’t show. As I recall, this was about 5/8″ deep. I used a Forstner bit, running the lathe slowly, to get a perfectly round, flat-bottomed hole with a small pit in the center.
Next post—mounting so you don’t wind up with a hole you don’t want in the other end of the blank.
