My photography skills are lacking, but I just felt like sharing my small collection of custom brushes:
![[Image: p1020168u.jpg]]()
The brushes on the ends were made by Steve (oscar11), harvesting Muhle v1 knots from existing 23mm and 25mm brushes. The middle brush is by Rudy Vey using a 21mm v2 knot that I ordered direct from Muhle.
What is interesting to me is how different these knots feel. As is well documented, the v2 brush is the softest. The densest brush is actually the 25mm (on the right), and I find this one is closest in feel to badger do to the density and because it has a bit more scrub than the v2 fibers. The stock Muhle 25mm knot has a loft at 62mm, but I had Steve shorten it quite a bit to around 56mm, and the brush is much improved. The 23mm (on the left) is more like "best" than "silvertip". It is the scrubbiest of the three and the fibers feel the coarsest (even though they are theoretically the same as the 25mm). The loft is a bit shorter than the stock Muhle loft.
Eventually I'll probably have to round out the collection with another v2 knot, but I'm satisfied for now. I think I first tried a Muhle synthetic around a year ago and have been very impressed with these brushes, and now they look as good as they perform. My expensive badger brushes have been getting very little use of late.
![[Image: p1020168u.jpg]](http://img818.imageshack.us/img818/82/p1020168u.jpg)
The brushes on the ends were made by Steve (oscar11), harvesting Muhle v1 knots from existing 23mm and 25mm brushes. The middle brush is by Rudy Vey using a 21mm v2 knot that I ordered direct from Muhle.
What is interesting to me is how different these knots feel. As is well documented, the v2 brush is the softest. The densest brush is actually the 25mm (on the right), and I find this one is closest in feel to badger do to the density and because it has a bit more scrub than the v2 fibers. The stock Muhle 25mm knot has a loft at 62mm, but I had Steve shorten it quite a bit to around 56mm, and the brush is much improved. The 23mm (on the left) is more like "best" than "silvertip". It is the scrubbiest of the three and the fibers feel the coarsest (even though they are theoretically the same as the 25mm). The loft is a bit shorter than the stock Muhle loft.
Eventually I'll probably have to round out the collection with another v2 knot, but I'm satisfied for now. I think I first tried a Muhle synthetic around a year ago and have been very impressed with these brushes, and now they look as good as they perform. My expensive badger brushes have been getting very little use of late.