Had my first shave with the TSR prototype brush today.
Out of the box it smelled great, I thought no way can this be a boar brush it smells too nice :lol:
It smelled of Penns EF to me although I am told it has not been EF that was used before I got it. It just shows you how a "dry smell" can differ, I soaked it for ten mins while showering and had another sniff before I used it, after soaking it was more woody but still nice. Now it is Tabacified and therefore more manly, I need another couple of goes with this to draw a conclusion but here are my initial impressions.
Today I had a second day Polsilver blade loaded in a Chatsworth and got a great shave but how did the brush itself perform. Well it lathered up readily with Tabac but I do have soft water so that is a bit of a moot point for me. I loaded the brush and then mixed the lather to shave grade in a bowl, I find bowl mixing more controllable with a new brush or soap and easier to get it right. When lathering my face I found I was using it more as an applicator than a lather generator, predominately using back and forth strokes because when I tried to do some swirling it splayed too much and I was rubbing my face with the center of the knot rather than the tips and that does not seem to work well for me.
I don't think it is the loft that's to blame, at least not on its own, I think it needs more density. Certainly for boar I expected more stiffness so I am a bit confused with this brush, it's may be bi-polar. Is this supposed to be a face lathering hard soap brush or is it a nice soft cream brush intended for bowl latherers, or and all rounder? I think if I had tried to face lather this morning I would be well pissed off, in my mind people buy boar brushes because they are generally stiffer, cheaper and more suited to face lathering (at least I thought so), I could have done the same shave this morning with my SR3824 and got an identical result but with a nicer experience.
I am biased towards badger and I do not disguise this. However this is not a crap brush but it is also not what I expected, I don't want rock hard stiff but my main gripe was it splayed way to easily and secondary it feels too sparse for my liking. Perhaps if it did not splay as much it would feel more dense, would a loft reduction would resolve this? I don't know. I would leave to someone more knowledgeable than me to decide what would be the best way to make it stop splaying out as much and feel denser in use. Perhaps a bit of both is needed, drop the loft by just a couple of mm and increase the density a bit, who knows....
Tonight I will try the Acrylic one just for a test run, but tomorrow I will try face lathering with the TSR one. As for the handle I like the wood, I would have still liked acrylic but not the one with lots of flat sides, a round acrylic one. However the majority seem to like the wood more and I am happy to go with this part. Just the knot needs a little rework.
I will report back tomorrow and try to get this sent onto next tester before the weekend so they can have it next week and see if we can get this moved on.