Review Frank Shaving - Two Band Finest Turnback Travel Brush

Nav

Forum GOD!
Hi Gents,

I received my FS travel brush a few days ago. Here's my review of the brush:

Out of the box, I was surprised at how small and light the aluminium casing was. I really like the form factor given it's intended to be thrown in a travel bag.

There was no badger funk to speak of. I put it in my soaking vessel and even when wet, the new badger brush smell was very faint and nothing I thought I needed to "de-funk".

I proceeded to hand lather it and repeated this process 3 times just to loosen up the new knot and bloom it out properly. Even whilst hand lathering, it felt fairly nice with some scrub and no scritch (the first hand lather had a tiny bit of scritch).

The brush barely lost a total of 6 hairs in the total process and nothing after that. Impressive knot construction!!

On to the performance: The dimensions are 47mm/21mm. It's a medium density knot, which basically means it is not so dense that it'll hog lather but it also doesn't splay like crazy and retains its shape fairly well whilst face lathering (I only face lather).

I felt the 47mm/21mm is perfect for this brush in terms of density to splay ratio. I know it's all YMMV and all that, but I really dislike very dense badger knots that barely splay and hog all my lather. Again, this brush doesn't hog the lather and has a fairly good "natural splay", which is basically what I characterise as the top half of the knot splaying without having to push down on the brush too much. This is what I mean by density to splay ratio and I find this brush to be very good in this respect.

The tips do have a bit of scrub that most two band finest knots have. It's not scratchy but more like, you feel the tips of the knot on the face like a slight exfoliator. This too reduces over time with use with all the two band finest brushes I've experienced. The bit of scrub they do retain is great, I enjoy it quite a lot and is the primary reason why I have a mixture of silvertips and two band finest in my den, as I can change it up depending on my mood.

The 21mm knot may seem small but it held enough lather for a full 3 pass shave and it's big enough that it didn't fling/lose any lather during the face lathering process.

It takes about 24hours for it to dry out, which is faster than a silvertip but much slower than a synthetic, which is to be expected given it's a natural hair brush. The top of the aluminium case is open so as to allow the brush to keep airing out and drying even if you pack it away in your travel bag.

I believe it's black anodized aluminium so I hope the black doesn't start peeling away, especially as it'll be used on my travels. It's really classy looking and my wife also commented on it when she saw it in the bathroom.

As far as I'm aware, it's only available from the FS store on aliexpress, but may be available elsewhere which I may not be aware of.
FS-Frank Grooming Shaving Store - Small Orders Online Store, Hot Selling and more on Aliexpress.com | Alibaba Group

Overall, I'm loving the form factor of the case and the black aluminium look. The knot performs very well and the brush allows one to have some luxury on the road, with the convenience of the turnback design. The knot is very enjoyable and this brush will hopefully give me years of good company on the road.




 

Nav

Forum GOD!
Thanks for sharing @Nav. I had a Frank Shaving Finest and I liked it
I hope to is more Frank Shaving brushes. I'm quite impressed with this one.

If I had to compare the knot, I'd say it's like a Simpson Commodore x1 or the Berkeley, except the FS is a tad larger.
 
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