Yes, brushes!

Smith & Co is now offering online the same high-quality brushes we used to offer only in our Factory-Store or mail-order.

Genuine natural-bristle brushes, Not-Made-In-China.

Ours are made in Indonesia on the high-quality German brush-making machines, which is why they are far-higher-quality than the cheap made-in-China-or-elsewhere chip-brushes you can buy in local stores.

These have a double-thick set-in-epoxy bristle-pack, not the single-thick bristle-pack of the Chip-brushes and those often set in rubber-cement or worse..

Here's the story on "Natural-Bristle" brushes: They are made from pig hair, commonly known as "hog bristle". That's what "natural bristle" means. Natural means pig, but sounds better. A long time ago hogs were raised as food animals and also ran wild in America, Europe and China. Hogs were quite hairy. They were "Domesticated" as farm-animals and raised for meat. The Chinese found uses for the hair, in not only paint-brushes but even in toothbrushes. The Europeans raised their pigs also for the meat but considered the hair a nuisance in the rendering process and so selectively-bred their pigs to be hairless. When Europeans came to this country they brought their hairless pigs (farm animals) with them, and so commercial hog-production in America yields no hog bristle.

Consequently, the world's supply of commercial Natural-Bristle for brushes comes pretty-much from China. Brushes are made there, on Chinese brush-making machines. China also exports bulk hog bristle to other countries for brush-production elsewhere.

Here's how to make our natural-bristle brushes equal in quality to the name-brand really-expensive natural-bristle brushes:

Before using, do this:

Shampoo the brush in any good hair-shampoo-and-conditioner, such as the products ladies use on their beautiful hair. Natural Bristle is, after all, hair. The shampoo/conditioner/rinse removes the rare loose bristles and mainly bristle-fragments that are in all such brushes, which is what the name-brand folks do. It also makes the bristles more supple, more flexible, thus less brittle, thus less inclined to break during use.

Swing each brush rapidly downward once or twice to throw out the free water. Hang them out to dry a few days, so both the bristle-pack and the wood handle are completely dry. Hanging a brush to dry is preferable to laying-flat on a surface.

The brush is now ready for any fine finishing work.

© copyright 1972 - 2018, Steve Smith, reprinted with permission