Shaving brushes and end grain woes.

[Damon Stathatos]

Not my normal 'fare' but I have a regular customer who makes shaving brushes and accessories who sent me a few brush 'knots' (the hair part) to fool around with. Nice guy and he does pretty well with his brushes. These are all cocobolo, one with a jatoba 'insert', and one with a maple 'insert' and a bit of antler. As I was doing the first one, which was a 'duplicate' shape to my shaving brush of twenty-some-odd years from a long ago trip to London, I started thinking about driving a 1/2" mortising bit through the center of the blank and pounding a piece of 1/2" square 'contrasting' wood through the center, and then turning. The second one is the one with the jatoba center but the mortising bit exited the blank kind of like a shot gun, with a lot of tear out. I needed to turn that one down quite a ways to get past the tear out and as I was doing that, I decided for my last one, I'd only drive the mortising bit about 1/3 of the way in on each side (and not all the way through)...learn by doing (read: mistake) type of thing. I'm still frustrated with the 'inserts' because while turning, the end grain acts much differently than the adjoining face grain so it's not easy to get a clean shape. Maybe next time I'll try driving the insert in, with a face grain orientation, but I'm not sure there's going to be a next time...my first brush has lasted 20 years and is still going strong and I'm pretty sure I don't have another 60 in me for these three brushes. Looks like someone around me's going to get a shaving brush or two.

Attached are some photos I've taken for my website. It's very hard to tell about the end grain issue in these photos but in person, the 'insert' looks as if it has separated a bit on the left corners (the last bit through the knife while turning). Anyway, I hope you enjoy and let me know if anyone has any ideas (solution) about the end grain issue experienced while turning.

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[George Morris]

Very nice! Well done!