Opinions about Epsilon Horse Brush w. 27mm knot & 50mm loft

Messages
54
Recently my brother asked me, what kind of present I would like for birthday. I told him, that there is until now no shaving brush with horsehair within my collection and therefore such shaving brush would be a good choice. I gave him some further advices about where to buy and what kind of brushes I like and so on.

Ok, it turned out that his present for me was an Epsilon Horsehair brush with black handle, 26mm knot and a 50mm bulb shaped brown horsehair loft. You can find it in the Gifts&Care shop if you search for this reference number: GC12900/4

I have already seen, that quite a lot people trying to resell this brush second hand after a few uses within the trade sections of several wetshaving forums.

Frankly speaking, I was really surprised because this beast is lightyears different from every other brush that I've used until now. Before I will make my final conclusion about this brush, I would like hearing opinions from other owners/users about those brushes.

Thanks a lot in advance for your personal comments and opinions.
Batou
 
Last edited:
Recently my brother asked me, what kind of present I would like for birthday. I told him, that there is until now no shaving brush with horsehair within my collection and therefore such shaving brush would be a good choice. I gave him some further advices about where to buy and what kind of brushes I like and so on.

Ok, it turned out that his present for me was an Epsilon Horsehair brush with black handle, 26mm knot and a 50mm bulb shaped brown horsehair loft. You can find it in the Gifts&Care shop if you search for this reference number: GC12900/4

I have already seen, that quite a lot people trying to resell this brush second hand after a few uses within the trade sections of several wetshaving forums.

Frankly speaking, I was really surprised because this beast is lightyears different from every other brush that I've used until now. Before I will make my final conclusion about this brush, I would like hearing opinions from other owners/users about those brushes.

Thanks a lot in advance for your personal comments and opinions.
Batou

I am not familiar with the brand you mentioned but I can recommend Vie Long horsehair brushes, nice quality and good price, I purchased mine from The Original Shaving Company on ebay.
Might be worth a look

Just noticed the Epsilon is Vie Long brush, as I said nice brushes, very pleased with mine.
 
Last edited:
Had the same Epsilon brush but in butterscotch. Soft when dry. Prickly when wet. Bowl lathering, applying lather with a slow hand in a painting motion, was the only way for me to make it work. In my book a looker but by no means a favourite in use.

epsilon_horse_shaving_brush.jpg
 
Last edited:
Hi!

I'm one of the guys whose after buying Vielong Horse brushes decided to re-sell them quickly... And believe me, I owned MANY both with brown and white hair, 50/50 and 30/70 mane tail mix, etc. Simply IMHO they are not good for facelathering, at least in the same way than with other kind of brushes: they have many problems with entangling issues, loosing hairs, too pricky, etc.

If you want a really good horse brush I personally recommend you to opt for the new Zenith horse brushes released recently by/thanks to yourshaving shop:

https://www.yourshaving.com/en/10-shaving-brushes#/manufacturer-zenith_shaving_brushes/hair-horse

They were developed in colaboration with SCNH spanish forum and they are simply wonderful: no entangling issues, latherer beasts with dense 27 knots that does'nt feel too big in face.

You can choose between regular 50/50 tail (good backbone, a bit of scritch in tips, excellent for soaps) or extrasoft (less backbone, supersoft tips, a bit foam hunger and best for creams, really similar to a good silvertip badger).

Regards
 
Hi!

I'm one of the guys whose after buying Vielong Horse brushes decided to re-sell them quickly... And believe me, I owned MANY both with brown and white hair, 50/50 and 30/70 mane tail mix, etc. Simply IMHO they are not good for facelathering, at least in the same way than with other kind of brushes: they have many problems with entangling issues, loosing hairs, too pricky, etc.

If you want a really good horse brush I personally recommend you to opt for the new Zenith horse brushes released recently by/thanks to yourshaving shop:

https://www.yourshaving.com/en/10-shaving-brushes#/manufacturer-zenith_shaving_brushes/hair-horse

They were developed in colaboration with SCNH spanish forum and they are simply wonderful: no entangling issues, latherer beasts with dense 27 knots that does'nt feel too big in face.

You can choose between regular 50/50 tail (good backbone, a bit of scritch in tips, excellent for soaps) or extrasoft (less backbone, supersoft tips, a bit foam hunger and best for creams, really similar to a good silvertip badger).

Regards

I have had no problems with tangling and face lathering is excellent with TOBS.
Funny old game this shaving lark everybody has a different experience.

It's good to hear other opinions, I am always looking for new equipment to try.
 
Thank you very much for writing your personal opinions and viewpoints about those Epsilon Horsehair brushes.

Had the same Epsilon brush but in butterscotch. Soft when dry. Prickly when wet. Bowl lathering, applying lather with a slow hand in a painting motion, was the only way for me to make it work. In my book a looker but by no means a favourite in use.
View attachment 33982

Nisse, I don't know whether you are talented in thought-reading but that describes exactly my impressions after using this brush for a few times. Especially this strange "soft when dry and prickly when wet" thing is something that I never experienced before. For my personal opinion it is questionable if such an extreme knot to loft ratio (less than 1:2) makes sense for an horsehair shaving brush.

Anyway, thanks a lot for your recommendations about alternative products within this discussion thread. I will check them out.
 
Anyone actually measured loft on Zenith? According to Yourshaving 27 mm with 51 mm loft but judging by pics I would guess loft is more like 57 mm...
 
After using my Epsilon brush now for some time I give up my hopes that there might be some noticeable (positive) change after a break-in period. Anyway, this brush is not for me. Too dense, too stiff, too scratchy. My first horse hair shaving brush experience ends quite disappointing. Why didn't they spend this brush 5mm more loft?
 
Anyone actually measured loft on Zenith? According to Yourshaving 27 mm with 51 mm loft but judging by pics I would guess loft is more like 57 mm...

Well, if I take some hi-res photographs of both brushes from vendor websites, scale them to equal knot size and take the quotient of the measured loft sizes, my estimation is that the Zenith horse hair brush should have approximately 60mm loft length.
 
I am tempted to test a Zenith 50/50 horse.

(Wrote Gift&Care re the Epsilon brush and got the answer Vielong is treating the hair to make it soft enough for face lathering and my experience was not at all typical for the brush. Was adviced to keep it and test for a couple of weeks to see if it got any better. Did that but no change so wrote Gift&Care again no answer this time so binned the brush)
 
How do you guys care for your horse hair brushes? I am looking at getting one but keep reading stories about knotting and having to be careful not to splay the brush etc.

Sent from my Swift 2 using Tapatalk
 
How do you guys care for your horse hair brushes? I am looking at getting one but keep reading stories about knotting and having to be careful not to splay the brush etc.

Sent from my Swift 2 using Tapatalk

If you see my previous post I said that I had no problems with my horsehair brush, guess what....it tangled, totally p'd off with it.
I do not want or see the need to brush and condition a shaving brush as some suggest, life is too short for that.

Chucked the horsehair in the bin and got a Yaqi synthetic..... lovely
 
How do you guys care for your horse hair brushes? I am looking at getting one but keep reading stories about knotting and having to be careful not to splay the brush etc.

Sent from my Swift 2 using Tapatalk
As I said as well in my previous post, if you want a really good horse brush without the need of taking special care & problems with tangling issues, grab a Zenith horse instead of vielong ones from yourshaving.com shop... You won't be disappointed for sure!

Regards

Enviado desde mi MI 5 mediante Tapatalk
 
Back
Top Bottom