Bench Update - Shaving Brushes

Bench Update

I have a lot of projects on the bench right now.

Recently I discovered a place that sells hair knots for shaving brushes, so I bought a few as samples to try out. And then I played with my lathe and turned a bunch of proto-shaving brush handles. I didn’t really have a good idea before turning on the lathe how big they should be, but made a nice variety ranging from a huge piece that I made from purpleheart, to a tiny little tulipwood. Turns out that the smaller size is better for brushes. Right now I have handles of tulipwood, purpleheart, cocobolo, wormy pecan, salt cedar (tamarisk), pear, manzanita, apricot, and recycled ironwood fencepost, and I may be forgetting one or two more. I only have three brushes, boar (coarse), black badger (pretty soft), and silvertip badger (softer). All brushes don’t fit in all handles, but let me know if you are interested.

I bought a bunch of new wood, mostly domestic: Hickory, red gum, spalted ambrosia maple, rainbow poplar, and I swear there was another that I can’t remember. I use a lot of exotics, but some of these have some nice character as well. We’ll see what they turn into.

Knife-wise, I have a couple of big chef’s knives in progress (both CPM 154 Stainless), at least three full tang hunting knives (two drop point, one nesmuk), a few partial tang hunters, a couple daggers, and some miscellaneous others. I’m getting ready to start a couple more, with the basic idea of simple and full length tangs, so I can try out a couple of new handle ideas.

I’ve got some fancy decoration ideas for a couple of knives as well, like for finishing the copper and cholla dagger shown above. It will be pretty southwestern, lots of copper and turquoise. I just have to get around to doing some filework on the guard and pommel.

Using that idea I made this fancy manzanita brush with inlays of turquoise and copper.

That doesn’t sound like too much does it? Maybe it’s just that I don’t have any time.