Proper brush care/maintenance

When a person comes to a hobby forum seeking advice on a piece of equipment, he or she hopes to drastically reduce the trial and error process, including associated costs. While every person will eventually make choices based on personal preferences, starting the trial and error process using equipment already proven to work by skilled individuals will very probably reduce the cost, frustration, and time associated with the learning process.

In my experience, cheap brushes almost universally suck. If the brush costs a buck or two, it will lose hairs, lose the tip, and break at the ferrule almost immediately.

Based on my reading, many skilled figure painting artists prefer Kolinsky sable fur brushes for detail painting. Also based on my reading, most of those brushes are manufactured in China using fur harvested from a whole range of animals, many endangered, because manufactures in that country do not need to follow any laws regarding animal cruelty or product standards. I am not paying one cent to support that sort of garbage.

I’ve been looking for durable, mid cost, point holding, synthetic, detail brushes manufactured in a western country without much luck. They must exist, probably coming out of France, Germany, Japan, or Spain, but I am not finding them.

Lots of good info regarding brush selection and care.

I have found that the Tamiya Modeling Brush Pro II is my go-to brush for most detailing. Although I have lots of brushes, the small items get the Tamiya treatment. Returns to that fine tip after each cleaning, and keeps the tip during the session.

I know we all have our own experiences and preferences. But for general applications, acrylic or enamel, AK Real Color or Vallejo, it’s a great little brush.

@Damraska: My research has suggested that the majority of the various mink-type hairs used for fine brushes comes from farm raised mink and sable out of Russia. Although I should think that Finland, Sweden, Norway and possibly Canada might also have similar farms for mink and sable.

A major issue here in the US is that environmentalist/animal-rights special interest groups have pressured the federal government to ban the import of sable and mink furs - to include sable artist paint brushes - unless the importer can document that the furs in question were not wild-trapped.

Sounds simple until you consider that the importer (say, a hobby vendor or fine arts supplier) doesn’t actually do business with the source of the furs, but rather is wholesale purchasing paint brushes from some manufacturer located in another country (because perish the thought of a US domestic mink farm and paint brush manufacturing industry). That brush maker has to document and provide the acceptable certifications that their brushes are made only from “farm-raised” fur animals. Follow that bureaucratic chain of evidence all the way from the vendor selling a decent paint brush back to some fur animal farm in Siberia to add up all the extra costs from a few hairs taken from the animal’s tail to the print brush in your hand…

So, at one time fine “red sable” paint brushes were expensive because they were made from the same wild-trapped furs used by the garment industry (everyone knows how expensive a fur coat is) but now the brushes are expensive because of the costs associated with proving that they’re made with hair taken from farm-raised animals whose “rights” have not been violated instead of violating the “rights” of the same kind of animal trapped in the wild.

https://furcommission.com/mink-farming-2/

Minks are also used for decimating rats
https://www.youtube.com/c/JosephCartertheMinkMan/videos

I have no info on sable though …

1 Like

I buy a new brush…

The same kind of untended consequences (or maybe not) that we are seeing with the movement to ban plastic grocery bags. First they clamored to get rid of paper to use plastic bags. Now with all the plastic floating in the ocean they are clamoring to get rid of plastic and are pushing for reusable type cloth or other bags. It never ends. Sorry for the rant. If the moderators deem it unacceptable it ok, just needed to vent.

1 Like

I am in the process of re-purposing my worn out chinos to shopping bags.
Using 1 inch wide woven bands, the same material that is used in ratchet straps,
to strengthen the handles. The band is listed at 650 pounds load limit so with two
handles the bag should be good for 2600 pounds which gives me a safe margin
to my own lifting capacity …