Maintaining your Badger Hair Shaving Brush

First clean off your shaving brush

Wash a new badger shaving brush well before using it. Prior to its first use, a new badger shaving brush should be washed gently but thoroughly, using warm soapy water. Be prepared for some hairs to come loose. When you get a new brush, it is quite natural for a few loose hairs to come away from the brush in the first few weeks–these are shorter hairs that did not quite reach the glue base and this should not be a cause for concern.

Let it dry. Place the shaving brush in its holder with the bristles facing down. Before storing, it is always important to allow the shaving brush to dry thoroughly, as leaving it wet and damp can damage the bristles. As shown in the image, run your clean thumb across the brush to check that it is dry.

Using the badger shaving brush

Wet the brush thoroughly before use. Dip the tip of the brush into the shaving cream or soap (you can use a shaving bowl). Lather gently using a light circular or up-and-down motion. When applying the shaving cream or soap, avoid applying so much pressure that the badger hair splays - be gentle.

Rinse the brush. After shaving, rinse the brush gently but thoroughly in clean, warm water.

Flick the excess water away and place the brush in a stand with the hair pointing down. If you do not have a stand, leave the brush pointing out rather than horizontal, so that air can get to all hairs and dry the brush naturally.

Be sure that your brush has air. Natural hair that is left wet can develop mildew; try to avoid enclosing a wet brush in a too small space.

·         If you keep it in the bathroom cabinet, make sure that it has sufficient space to dry.

·         If you shave away from home and keep your shaving brush in a travel tube or kit bag, give it an opportunity to dry as soon as you can.

Clean if needed. If your brush becomes affected by mildew or a build-up of soap, soak it in a solution of borax, which can be obtained from a pharmacy.

Answer to few questions related to "Why the New Badger Hair Brush have an Odor and How to get rid of it"?

Answer: Badger Hairs are natural hairs and comes from real animal and manufacturer process these hairs by first cleaning, sterilizing, and then drying, making knots and put into different type of handles and packing. Now failure happens in many steps and most common failure related to odor is that hairs not properly cleaned with sufficient amount of cleaner or if cleaned then not dried properly before packing.

There are so many ways that this problem can be fixed. Our suggestion and proven way of getting this problem fixed is putting your new brush before use outside in fresh air into direct sun light for couple of hours (would say for at-least 4-5 hours). We had done this on several brushes and results are +ve. You can use other methods as well and can Google it on web. We had found one article on this topic and it explains as follows

" Why does my new badger brush smell bad? "

Paul
Stillwater, OK

First it's important to remember that badger brushes are made from the hair of an animal. We eat hamburgers without thinking of how the beef was processed; similarly we often enjoy shaving without considering the origin of the badger brush. Shaving brush manufacturers sterilize the hair before they knot it into a handle, but sometimes this process fails to completely remove the animal odor from the hair. Usually, you can simply just lather and rinse the brush a few times using your regular shaving soap or cream, and that will wash out most of the smell. If the brush has a strong odor that will not go away, you can soak it in a cup of warm water with a teaspoon of either Borax soap or vinegar. Allow the brush to soak in the solution for a minute or two, rinse thoroughly, and then allow it to dry. The next time you use your new shaving brush, it should have a noticeably less offensive odor.