What's the rationale for no conditioner? I've seen some highly regarded wet shavers suggest it. I've never done it, I'm just curious what the effects are.
Badger and boar brushes both absorb water into the hairs to do their job properly.
Boar brushes of course do it too a much greater extent.
Conditioner puts product on the hair to prevent the absorption of water. And so therefore it gets in the way of it being able to do its job.
It's kind of like putting silicone sealant around a sponge. Until that stuff comes off it's not going to be a very good sponge.
Conditioner does make perfect sense when you think of it in light of you're trying to take care of hair, if you think of it as analogous to human hair. However that's not really what we're doing here. The brush is a tool and it has a job to do that includes absorbing water and becoming softer etc.
I think it's silicone particles that are actually put in the conditioner to cling to the hair fibers to do the job of the conditioner. And that of course keeps the brush from doing its job as the tool that it is.
They're also sources online, that I can't link to here because of forum rules, that talk about pH and other things like that. But for me I definitely know that the main focus is making sure those brushes can take in the water they need to to be soft and to deal properly with the lather.
And so I believe that applying conditioner, affects the way the brush works. Now of course that is neither positive nor negative on its own. I know that for me, it's a negative. But there are guys out there who may enjoy a brush that doesn't really absorb water into the fibers very much or boar brushes that take a long time to break in because that water absorption has been retarded. And so those guys might actually want to use a conditioner product on their brushes.
But I think your average shaver is more likely to want the benefits of the brush that you get when bristles are more easily able to absorb water.
(Sent from mobile)
