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Sablemark Brushmakers · est. 1954
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How a brush is made

Eleven stages between a bale of hair and a finished brush. Seven are hand operations, and the four that are not are the four where a machine is genuinely more consistent than a person.

An experienced maker's hands working at a bench

1–3 · Dressing the hair

By handDressing tray, comb, cannon

Raw hair arrives graded but not usable. It is combed to remove short and broken hair, then reversed so every tip points the same way — hair has a root and a tip and a brush made from a mixed bundle will never point. Finally it is drawn into a cannon, a small brass tube that gathers the bundle into the shape the finished head will take.

A dresser is the longest apprenticeship in the works. Ours take about two years before they dress Kolinsky unsupervised.

A metal component being formed on a lathe

4–6 · Tying and setting

By handWaxed thread, two-part resin

The bundle is bound at the base with waxed thread, tied off, and the tension of that tie decides more about the finished brush than any other single act. Too loose and the head splays; too tight and the belly loses its load. It is done by feel, and it is why the same reference tied by two people is not quite the same brush.

The tied bundle is then set in resin, base down, and cured. Nothing above the glue line is ever touched by adhesive.

Hands turning a wooden handle on a lathe

7–9 · Handles and ferrules

Machine, then handBirch, seven coats

Handles are turned from English birch on two automatic lathes — a machine holds a profile to a tenth of a millimetre all day and a person does not. They are then dipped, cured and dipped again, seven coats, and the last is done by hand because the meniscus at the ferrule end shows.

Ferrules are drawn seamless in nickel or double-crimped in brass depending on the series.

Finished pointed brushes on a pale background

10–11 · Crimping and test

By handWater test at the bench

Head and handle are brought together and the ferrule is crimped twice, at ninety degrees. Then every Kolinsky head — every one, not a sample — is wetted at the bench, loaded, and drawn once across the back of a hand. If the point does not return, the head goes back to the dressing tray and the hair is reused.

About one in eleven fails at this stage. On the synthetic series it is closer to one in forty, and there we test to a sampling plan rather than individually.

What the machines do

Turning, coating, ferrule drawing and crimping. Every one is a repeatability problem rather than a judgement problem, and pretending otherwise for the sake of a story about handmade goods would be dishonest. The judgement stages — dressing, reversing, tying, setting, testing — remain hand work because nobody has built a machine that does them as well, not because we are sentimental.

Materials, and where they come from

MaterialSourceNote
Kolinsky hairLicensed dealers, CITES documentedWinter tail only; documentation travels with every bale
Squirrel hairSame dealersBlue squirrel for mops, kazan for quill-set
Hog bristleChungking, via one importer since 1981Interlocked here, not bought pre-interlocked
Synthetic filamentTwo European extrudersTapered, three diameters, dyed to our profile
BirchUK and Baltic, FSC certifiedTurned on site

On animal hair. We use it, we say so plainly, and the paperwork for every consignment is available to any buyer who asks. We also make a full synthetic alternative to every natural-hair reference we sell, because a growing number of our stockists want a range with no animal product in it at all, and that is a reasonable thing to want.

Reworking

A splayed head is not always a dead brush. Series 12, 18 and 77 heads can be stripped, re-dressed and re-set at about a third of the price of a new brush, in batches of fifty. It is not worth doing for a single brush and we will say so if you ask.

Visiting

Trade customers can come and watch the benches by arrangement, Tuesday to Thursday. It takes about ninety minutes and there is nowhere to sit down. Schools and colleges we teach into are welcome too; give us a term's notice for a group over six.

Arrange a works visit