@Drubbing there are actually still quite a few EU brushmakers importing the loose hair (previously separated by length & grade) from China and gathering/filling/forming/tying/gluing/setting knots to handles all by hand. But most don't, and EU labor's never cheap, particularly for something that in the EU is considered a lifetime career, so it does ramp up the cost quite a bit from the base hair weight/grade and handle expenses.
From our stock, I know that all Dovos are done this way, and I watched them do so myself (didn't see Merkur, but wager machined). Nobody was giving them a knot; they were gathering hair, putting on a batteryless scale, stuffing in a 'pestle' pre-selected for that model (they had a few of them of different diameter/depth/head shape), trimming the back, tying it with a little twine, gluing that, letting it set a bit, and then a different glue was put in the base of the handle bore and they mated the two parts by hand.
VP Leonhardy's grades 4 & 5 (& even a couple grade 3/5) are all hand made, 5/5 not even trimmed on the bottoms (that is extreme). Our little no-name Deutschland brush shop works 100% by hand, & of course Simpson/Vulfix do it all by hand.
I suspect all Shavemac, HL Thaeter, & Muhle's highest tier only, are true handiwork. Where we found our 'house brand' firm was in a region of Germany where we also encountered several other tiny German brushmakers, whom made all sorts of brushes of which their shaving brush lines were only a paragraph of the page, and they seemed to be doing it all the same ways as far as I could see, with no machines making a peep. Twine, scales, glue, wooden thing for knot forms, patient and learned hands conducting.
German models tend to be far more uniform piece-to-piece than the nominal Simpsons variance, even when each is wholly handmade; surely Simpsons, too, must use the assistance of a "pestle" (or however they refer to that thing) for knot forming, can't imagine they're exclusively squishing it with merely their palms/fingers, so I chalk up the larger variance to being UK rather than DE produced.
No question about it, machined knots shed much, much less. Hand made equals recurring problem, no matter the skill or the glue used. But hand filled also can be denser and set deeper. Leonhardy's quite proud of this latter point, claim length of hair to be a barometer of intrinsic hair quality that those ever-crafty badger farm exporters cannot circumvent on their perpetual path to lower cost (plentiful <50mm strands for sale that were scratchy and dark before being altered to appear creamy white, but try finding >70mm strands of any condition, they're usually not openly offered). They told me no machine made knot could be made of ultra-premium hair w/o having to hack off 2cm+ of the "rear" side in the handle.
@stillshunter I'm sure many a shop's happy for our efforts in photographing Simpsons & other brushes, but if there wasn't one slogging uphill this way first, those less committed to such a request for service wouldn't have a "Send me one that looks like sample ___" point of reference. It is easy to follow and hard to lead; I don't know if any other shop does it (I doubt it), but since 2010 when we adopted the format it costs us about 800 man-hours a year, & I use the term "costs" quite accurately.
Do they not have CL2 in Oz? Find some shop who does, must be one. Terrific little things.
Someone on here chimed of tiring of Aussie Post. This I find truly hilarious - I speak from tremendous experience (you better believe we hear from almost every customer awaiting any elected-to-ship-untracked-to-save-gobs-of-cash parcel longer than a fortnight, & many chirp up even before that) when I declare it unequivocally the world's best, so if you're tired of them, at least be glad you're not ANYWHERE ELSE on the planet!
