A fellow Mastodonian commented on the quality of Zenith boar brushes — a brand that’s new to me — and once I looked at the brushes, three things struck me immediately:
- Handle quality — Aramis has a lovely handle of olive wood, but note also the handle on Porthos: it’s the same general design as the Omega Pro 48 handle, but made of solid aluminum (like the Antica Barbieria handle). And even Athos, which costs but €7, has a solid plastic handle, whereas the Pro 48’s handle is hollow. Now that I have seen Aramis in person, I think I prefer the brush actually suggested, a taller, more elegant version of Aramis. In any event, the handles are (IMO) wonderful in terms of material and design.
- Knot quality — I’ll know for sure when I start using the brushes, but I am impressed by the knots. They are well-shaped and nicely packed, and I very much like the option of getting unbleached bristles. You’ll notice that I got two brushes with unbleached bristles and but one with bleached. The knots of Athos and Porthos seemed very much the same except that one is bleached and the other not, so that will allow me to compare bleached vs. unbleached on a level playing field (as it were). I’m particularly taken by the long loft of Athos and Porthos.
- Overall design — The brushes are IMO quite attractive — pleasing to the eye, and now that I have handled them, pleasing to the hand.
I don’t right away use a new boar brush for a shave. Instead, the first week after a boar brush arrives, each morning I wet the knot well with hot water and let the brush soak for a while. Then I load the brush with shaving soap (for these brushes, I’m using L’Occitane and Martin de Candre because using a French soap seems appropriate), and work up a good lather in my cupped palm. Once I have a satisfactory lather, I rinse the brush with hot water until the water runs clear, then with cold water, shake it well, and stand it on its base to dry.
The reason for this break-in period is that new boar brushes in my experience will not maintain a lather for three passes of a shave — indeed, with a brand-new boar brush the lather is often sparse when you want to lather for the second pass and totally absent by the third. It’s as though the bristles are coated with some lathercidal substance, gradually washed away as the brush is lathered and used. A week seems long enough to get rid of it so the lather lasts the whole shave through. True breaking in of the bristles does continue for some time; this initial effort is just to ensure lather longevity.
I’m very pleased with the brushes, though I do now wish I had gotten the 507 instead of the 506.