You’re listening to Wet Shaving Talk powered by Sharpologist.com where we’re dedicated to preserving the art and skill of classic shaving. I’m your host Joe Borrelli and today is December 29th, 2025.
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Today on the Show:
Happy New Year!
Popular Vendor Shutting Down Operation
10 Years of Podcasts!
Collector Series: Declaration Shave Brushes
Wet Shaving New Years Resolutions
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Declaration Grooming Going Out Of Business
Declaration Grooming LLC (formerly L&L Grooming and Declaration Brushworks)owned and operated by Scott Stewart is closing down shop. Scott made the announcement last month and will completely shut down on January 31st.
Declaration brought back the American Artisan shave brush, with Scott being one of the first brush makers to hand-tie his own knots. His brushes are extremely popular and of good quality,and the MilkSteak base for his soaps were great as well.
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10 Years of Podcasts
It’s hard to believe it’s been 10 years! When I started podcasting back in 2015 I never thought it would lead to this!
I am very happy and proud to have put on this show for this long and grateful for the wet shaving community as well as Mantic for all of his support!
I’ll discuss some notable moments of the years:
Most of you know the origins of the podcast, starting as Wet Shaving News and was hosted by Andrew back in the summer of 2015. Andrew was a relatively new wet shaver and wanted to do more for the community by starting his own show based on interviewing artisans and up to date news. When he posted an ad looking for a co-host, I replied with interest. At the time I was a new collector and enthusiast and thought it would be a fun way to discuss wet shaving.
I took over completely after a few months with my first solo show being on 2/10/2016. From there Andrew and I continued to collaborate until the end of 2016 where he decided to move on. The last show of Wet Shaving News was on 1/16/17.
On January 30th 2017 the first episode of Wet Shaving Talk premiered and has been running since. Believe it or not this is the 199th episode! With episode #200 premiering in January! (I wish I stayed on schedule).
As the podcast progressed, I decided to venture away from interviewing artisans, and focus more on the industry, cool facts and collecting. Most were interviewed on several other platforms and I felt the repetition would hinder my identity. I also feel this gives me more of an unbiased approach to the industry and thus keeps everything neutral which is the vibe I wanted from day one.
Out of all the shows my personal favorite was the Fall Seasonal Special from 2017. This was a big show and took me a long time to make but I had a lot of fun doing it. I believe the artisan movement was the greatest at this time because everything was so new and innovative. To this day the Fall Seasonal Special is my favorite show to make and remains the most listened to year after year.
Some challenges over the years, well covid really slowed things down. At a time where we needed more podcasts ( since everyone was home) it was very hard to get new content. Everything was at a standstill and if you notice I changed things up during that time to focus more on collecting. There was literally nothing out there being made and the secondary market was drying up.
Some other cool facts about the cast:
-Over 200 episodes have been released (with this being the 199th for WST)
-AI has never been used for content.
-The cast has been streamed all over the world! In dozens of countries!
-Every show has been recorded in Florida.
Some cool links:
-First show as a co-host: https://sharpologist.com/podcast/welcome-show-joe/
-First solo show: https://sharpologist.com/podcast/wet-shaving-podcast-dateline-10-feb/
-Last episode of Wet Shaving News: https://sharpologist.com/podcast/wet-shaving-news-podcast-january-16-2017-announcing-wet-shaving-talk-podcast/
-First Episode as Wet Shaving Talk https://sharpologist.com/podcast/wet-shaving-talk-podcast-1/
-My Favorite Show: https://sharpologist.com/podcast/wet-shaving-talk-fall-seasonal-special/
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Collectors Series: Declaration Shave Brushes
Declaration Grooming is a highly regarded American artisan known for producing premium, hand-tied badger hair shaving brushes and high-performance soaps. Founded in 2015 and rebranded in 2017, the company has achieved cult status among wet shaving enthusiasts
Hand-Tied Knots: Unlike many competitors that use pre-made knots, every Declaration brush is hand-tied by the artisan, Scott. This allows for exceptional density and specific performance profiles for each “batch” of hair. B1-B18.
Handle Designs: The brand is famous for iconic handle shapes, particularly The Jefferson (inspired by Thomas Jefferson), The Washington, and The Theodore.
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Wet Shaving New Years Resolution
Time to make these commitments. Whether it’s learning a new skill or getting that bucket list item, what are your resolutions for 2026?
I’ll discuss how to choose your commitments and how to achieve them!
- Make your list
- Timeline
- DO IT!
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Mantic’s New Site: The Black Coffee Life
MAntic has a new site dedicated to coffee: Check it out: https://theblackcoffeelife.com/
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Our show is powered by Sharpologist.com, “What Your Father Didn’t Teach You about Shaving”
Special Thanks to:
Mark aka Mantic 59
Most of All……….YOU!!!!
Don’t forget to check out my blog site www.shavestraightandsafe.com for the tips and interesting wet shaving stories!
Please feel free to contact me at [email protected]
Subscribe to my You Tube Chanel for videos regarding some interesting wet shaving content.
Don’t forget to check out my book “The Modern Guide to Straight Razor Shaving” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and at Pasteur’s Pharmacy in NYC.
If you’re a vendor and would like to be featured on the show please contact me!!
Transcript (Generated using Transcript LOL)
You’re listening to Wet Shaving Talk, powered by Sharpologist.com, where we’re dedicated to preserving the art and skill of classic shaving. I’m your host, Joe Borelli, and today is December 29th, 2025. Hello everyone, welcome back to the podcast and happy new year to you all.
That’s right, 2025 is in the books. We are looking forward to 2026 and just a little bit of time ahead and we are going to start a brand new year here, full I’m sure of wet shaving innovation, new stuff coming out. New classics who knows what we’re going to find maybe we’re going to find a razor that nobody’s ever seen before Uh, maybe we’re going to see some class some really cool barnyard finds or cool razor finds, but you know what? The best part is we don’t know what’s in store.
So i’m really excited to see what this year is going to bring I wanted to also wish you guys a happy holiday season. I hope you had a great holiday season Uh for christmas hanukkah all the above and had and got everything on your wish list And if you didn’t make sure you get it for yourself That’s right. You heard me right. If you didn’t get what you wanted, if Santa Claus didn’t bring you that gift that you wanted, then you know what?
Treat yourself. Do it for yourself. Make sure you get it. Just kidding.
Keep it within reason. Definitely don’t want to make anybody get in trouble over that. I do apologize, I’ve been a little bit in and out. This holiday season at my work was really, it was very fun, I could tell you that.
It was a lot this year. I could say that being a retail manager for over 20 years now, I’ve been in retail for a very long time, everything’s changing constantly. We have technology, all that, but ultimately, the one thing that doesn’t change is that everybody shops at the same time. If you think about it, they all shop for the holidays, and everybody gets, and there’s always a good spike during that time, so it takes a lot of my time and a lot of my attention, so I do apologize for missing a couple, I think I missed a
show or two, but moving forward, this new year’s coming up, we’ll have more time, we’ll definitely get some good content going out there, and have some fun. So I appreciate you guys’ patience with me. And I hope you all, again, I hope you had a great holiday season, got everything that you wanted. And if you didn’t, make sure you get it.
That’s right. You heard it here first. So today on the show, there’s a popular vendor shutting down operation. This was announced about a month ago, a few weeks ago.
This vendor was kind of close to me because I featured one of my first articles on this vendor about 10 years ago and also got to meet him and I got to really try a lot of the products and it’s a little bit of a shame because he was definitely an innovator for wet shaving. For the whatchamaworld and now he’s shutting down Basically, I guess you could say burnout, you know increased cost I mean he put all the reasonings in the email that he sent out to his clients and Just looking at that. It’s just like hey, you know How many other people are going through that and still sticking it out or just shutting it down?
If you look at it, I was going to do like a little analyst in the new year and see how many people have done that exactly. How many people have come, been very popular and just kind of said, hey, you know what, I’m just going to get a nine to five job and call it quits for now. But we’ll talk about that. Another thing is 10 years of podcasting.
So guys, I’ve been doing this for 10 years now, officially 10 years in November. We have been doing podcasts. Now, this podcast, believe it or not, there’s some cool facts about it. I wanted to talk to you guys about it.
I wanted to discuss it and just kind of talk about the story of the podcast today. I know a lot of you have been listening for the entire duration that we’ve been doing this, but a lot of people, believe it or not, are logging in for the first time or haven’t listened for a few years and just come periodically back and forth. I think sometimes, at least when I listen to podcasts and I listen to people that are You could say like a big company or a corporation or a celebrity or something like that. I like to know what they’re doing, like how they do it, what brought them there.
And I figured, you know, what better way to do it than to say it on a podcast episode. So I’ll tell you the whole story, a couple of cool facts, and a really cool fact that’s coming up actually on the next show, which you’ll see coming up. and collector series just to talk a little bit more about that vendor. A little bit of a spoiler here, we’re going to talk about Declaration Shave Brushes a little bit and salute them.
That’s a good company that’s good brushes, hand-tied knots and all that. I’ll tell you a little bit about that and my story with them. That will be our collectible item of the week. And then wet shaving, New Year’s resolutions.
That’s right, every year, guys, I say this. What are your New Year resolutions, right? I like to write them down, keep them to about two or three, right? Don’t keep too much, but let’s get them going and let’s see if we can come through with them this year.
So guys, without further ado, let’s get on with the show. So Declaration Grooming, this company, again, has been around for exactly about 10 years, and they’re officially going out of business. So Scott has decided to shut down shop, mainly because it’s too expensive. It’s hard, right?
The costs have gone up, demand has gone down a little bit. Let’s be honest with these brushes, with shave brushes and in general, it’s the specialty items, the stuff selling out in five minutes, all that’s kind of dwindled a little bit, right? So just going over it, Declaration Grooming, they were formerly L&L Grooming. He also owns Declaration Brushworks, which is that brush company, which we’ll talk about their brush in the collector series.
It’s been owned by Scott for the whole time. Scott’s moved several times. I think he was in Georgia, then he went up to Michigan, then he went back to Georgia. I think he’s back in Michigan again.
I’m not sure. He’s moved around a lot in his career, and he’s brought the brushes and the soap company with him. So he made the last announcement that the last day is going to be January 31st. So if there’s anything left on the site, it’ll be posted until then and all custom brush orders will be fulfilled by that point.
So if you ordered a brush through him, he will definitely make it. I’m sure you’ve already been in contact with him and you’ll get it. But basically, back in 2015 or 2016, when Scott started really emerging into the wet shaving world, he was the only American brush maker that hand-tied his own knots at the time. So he was the first one.
And I remember the first time I saw it, I was like, wow, this is really incredible. These are cool brushes. He’s hand-tying his own knots, meaning he would buy bulk badger hair. tie him up himself in the in the way of doing it and then set them in the handle and then he offered it for services of any handle so if you bought a handle you could send it to him he’ll hand tie a knot in there and it
became very popular the knots are really good and he started them with batches with with numbers so b1 through b18 were the batches so he’s actually gone through quite a few batches with B1 probably being the most collectible, B3 being the most dense and probably the most controversial, and I think B7 or B8 was like the best that customers would say would be like the better one. So with declaration brushes and soaps, he came out with quite a few items. There was quite a few good scents and aftershaves and stuff.
I think he did a couple of accoutrements as well, like a few razors, some hardware and stuff here and there, but mostly it was all about brushes and with soap, soap and aftershave. And it just looks like that reading some of his posts lately, he’s just burned out. It’s a tough job. It’s a lot of work.
And the demand really isn’t there. His brushes started around $400. And it’s not something that everybody’s… It’s not in everybody’s price range.
It’s not everybody’s budget. So it’s tough to be able to sell enough brushes to live. And it’s a lot of work. I mean, I remember watching him.
make a brush before it took hours like hours and hours and then he was combing out the the knot on the brush after he said it and he spent a good about probably about good you know good amount of time building this one brush and to think about it to get that with the profit margin it’s may after a while you know if he’s not selling that much or if he’s not if bills come up or things change, it might be a little difficult for him to continue to do it. So I fully understand, Scott, we understand. We salute you on the Wet Shaving Podcast and look forward to seeing hopefully you come back in the future or watching your items become collectibles because those shave brushes are definitely going to be around for generations to come and will be very popular.
So, Scott, good luck to you, good luck to Declaration Grooming, and we hope to see you do some new stuff in the future. If not, we salute you. So 10 years of podcasts, this is something that I never honestly guys thought this would be. It’s hard to believe it’s been 10 years.
And when I started in 2015, I honestly really never thought it would have lasted this long. I never really thought how long it would last. I thought it was just something fun to do. And it turned out to be primary, one of my major hobbies if not commitments to where I’ve gone through the last 10 years and I’ve moved, I’ve had a kid, I’ve gotten, I was just married when I started this.
I literally got married a few months before I started podcasting. So I mean, it’s just a lot has gone through in my life during these 10 years and I’m so glad to be continuing to do this. So I want to discuss some notable moments and some stuff that went on with the podcast and just go over it a little bit. Most of you guys know the origins of the podcast, knowing as it started out, and if you don’t, I’ll tell the story in a quick and easy to understand manner.
It started out as wet shaving news on Sharpologist. It was hosted by Andrew. Back in the summer of 2015. So Andrew was a relatively new whatchaver He wanted to do more for the community wanted to reach out.
He was also into I guess you could say Podcasting radio and all that stuff. He had a degree a couple degrees in that stuff I think he ended up being a pilot overall haven’t spoken to him in a very long time, but I know he was he was working on becoming a pilot. He also worked at Disney for some time in the technical area underneath underground. And with like the lighting and stuff, I forget.
Again, Andrew, if you’re listening, I apologize. It’s been so long and I haven’t spoken to you. If you are listening, hit me up because I’d love to talk to you here and there. So that’s when it started.
He was relatively new. He started his own show. He reached out to, I believe it was to Mark and said, hey, I got this and wanted to work out a podcast. So he started it out with like doing, I guess you could say news, like just basic news that you would see in the wet shaving world would go over it and would just bring it like a dateline.
It used to be dateline, the date, episode number. So it would be like just really overall wet shaving news. And at that time, there was only three podcasts. You had Rick DeWeese’s podcast, if you guys remember.
He retired or stopped podcasting a few years later. But he was also another inspiration for myself. I used to listen to him all the time. I used to enjoy it.
And I’d talk to him. I reached out to him. We’d talk for here and there. And then he ended up just putting it up.
He just said, hey, when I’m done, that’s it. I’m just going to just stop. I just want to stop. I don’t want to have an exit show or anything.
I’m just going to do one last show and just never do it again. That’s kind of how he went out. That was the Brush Soap and Blade podcast. And then there was Douglas Smythe and his podcast back in the day, which was really good because he’s very good at that stuff and very good at radio and all that and marketing in general and just overall in advertising.
He was really good at just interviewing artisans. It was really interesting. It was almost like an old school radio show. And then Wet Shaving News.
So Andrew, a few months later, he posted a post on Sharpologist, because I was new to wet shaving, but not too new. I was in it for about four or five years. And I wanted to listen to a podcast. I thought it was great that there was a podcast just for wet shaving.
So I listened to it all the time. I listened to it on my way to work. I remember in my old house, I was working, doing work on a painting and fixing things. And I would have that on my radio.
And I would listen to the podcast while I was doing work in the home. So I thought it was, great thing so I listened to it every single really every single time it came out. He posted for a co-host and I said you know what I’m gonna I just sent an email saying hey I’m interested I can help you out I know a lot about wet shaving and I you know I could do some behind-the-scenes stuff and He got back to me, we talked, we did like a little phone discussion, phone call, we talked for a little while and then ultimately decided to put me in and then we started.
So I started behind the scenes doing some work, did an interview with me, and then I kind of just worked with him for a few months that way. So after a few months, I took over completely, because Andrew’s personal life and his work and his job was getting really demanding, and he kept on, he was less and less present, so he said, hey, can you take over a show here and there? I did, so pretty soon I started just doing all the shows, and then basically he was like, yeah, I took over for a few months. So we kept on collaborating together until about the end of 2016.
When we did our last show of the wet shaving talk was on one, uh, it was actually on January 16th, 2017. That was the last show of what shaving talk. And that’s where, you know, after our discussion with Mark, with me, he’s like, Hey, why don’t you start your own podcast? We’ll stop this one.
You get your own identity. And then we go from there. So I thought that was a great idea. I made up what shaving talk.
instead of What’s Shaving News, and we had our first show, the first show for What’s Shaving News, excuse me, What’s Shaving Talk was on the 30th of that January of 2017. It was the first episode, and it’s been running since. Now here’s another cool fact that I did not realize until just now. This podcast that I’m presenting to you is the 199th podcast for What’s Shaving Talk.
So the next show will be at 200. The fact that I could not time this to be 200 on the 10th anniversary show is a little bit disappointing to me. I said to myself, oh man, if I was just on time one more time, one more show, it would have been at 200, it would have been perfect. but I never even thought about it.
So this is the 199th episode of What Shaving Talk. So I thought it was really cool to see that and I couldn’t believe it. So number 200 is going to premiere in January and I’ll do a little special show for that too. So moving forward as the podcast progressed, I decided to venture away from interviewing artisans.
Now if you know Andrew was interviewing artisans, a lot of podcasters do. And I decided, after about the first six months, I did two interviews, three interviews. I interviewed Murray Carter, which was that, he was a master knife maker, right? And he was the guy that shaved himself with a spoon, like he sharpened a spoon to shave himself with.
So I interviewed him, and then I interviewed, I think, a couple other companies. And I just said, you know what? I’m gonna venture away from this. It’s not really my thing.
and I wanted to focus more on the industry and cool facts and collecting. Now, I got a lot of controversy with this. A lot of people were like, hey man, why don’t you interview? I want to hear an interview.
I said, well, that vendor was interviewed by like six different podcasters or it’s on YouTube or maybe even Mark interviewed him, right? I said, well, it’s really not much has changed. I don’t see the real benefit of me interviewing an artisan and bringing it to the podcast since it’s been done so many times. I wanted to do different stuff.
Now, I see where everybody was saying, hey, they want to just hear me talk with them or go shoot back and forth. But I thought just at the time, and still kind of believe in it, that the interviews are just, they’re not my thing. I guess they’re more along the lines of some other people out there. But right now, I thought that, hey, you know what?
I’m going to try this with cool news, facts, and collecting. Because I know that was something that a lot of the new guys on the podcasting Podcasters they don’t talk about collecting. They don’t talk about the vintage stuff They talk a lot about the new stuff and and mostly they they deal with software right they deal with soap and aftershaves They don’t really deal with like razors and stuff. So that’s kind of where I wanted to go I also felt, and still do, that not interviewing artisans or staying away from them keeps me more unbiased.
That’s really the approach that I wanted. I want to have a completely unbiased approach. I don’t want you guys seeing that I favor anything. I think you guys can see that I like things, but not that I was favoring a certain artisan or anything like that.
I want to keep a neutral vibe. I’ve always felt that that’s the best way to present kind of a news podcast or information podcast is to keep it basically as neutral as possible. If I don’t like something, you guys will know I didn’t really enjoy it or it wasn’t for me. And if I do like something, you’ll know that I did like it.
I think from there, I wanted to talk more about some of my favorite shows. I get that question a lot. Hey, Joe, what was your favorite part of podcasting? Not so much from viewers, but from my friends and family.
Like, hey, you’ve been doing this for 10 years. What’s your favorite part of it? What do you like? What was your best moment?
I thought about it. And I said, one of my favorite shows, I guess to tell you, would be the fall seasonal special from 2017. This was a big show. It took me a long time to make.
And it sticks out in my mind because it was like when wet shaving was really, really peaking. I think my opinion was from 2015 to 2018, wet shaving was on fire. This was just big. You had people buying razors and selling them for a premium, right?
You would buy a mongoose razor for $200, and they were selling it for $1,000. You were buying Waborg brushes for $300 and selling them for $1,500. It was just really big in demand. People were going crazy with collectability.
Toggles, bottom dials, all those big razors, they were going for a premium. And everything was just really, really interesting. It was big in collectability. A lot of vendors emerged at that time.
A lot of people came out. And it was going from relatively nothing to huge within 2012 to about 2017. It went from 10 times the size it was. That’s kind of like my favorite time.
That’s my all-time favorite episode. I think the Artisan Movement, again, was the greatest. I think also it took a lot of time to make that show. I remember it took me like 40 or 50 hours to make it.
I used to have to research. There was no AI back then, or anything, not that I use AI now. And I would go through vendor by vendor and just go through it. And it was just so much stuff that year.
And it was a lot of fun. I really learned a lot that year. And that’s one of the episodes that really sticks out in my mind as being my favorite. So I put a link in the show notes if you guys want to click on it and see it.
Again, I’ve progressed a lot I think with being able to find things and actually maybe even presenting the podcast. But that was my favorite show and I think I still enjoy listening to that one day in and day out. You know, here, probably periodically, I like to listen to a couple of podcasts to see how things were back then and to see, oh wow, I remember that vendor. Oh wow, I remember that day.
Oh wow, I remember that sale on eBay. Yeah, that’s my favorite show, all time. The Fall Seasonal Special of 2017. So, a lot of people will ask me, you know, what kind of challenges did you overcome?
What kind of challenges did the podcast go through? And I’d say, well, you know, COVID really hit, slowed things down in the wet shaving world in general. At the time, I think during COVID, we needed more podcasts because everybody was home. there was, it was very hard to find new content at that time because nobody was doing anything.
So I remember going through and digging through wherever I could find, I remember going through old interviews I did or old articles and bringing up collectible stuff and really seeing like, hey, let’s talk about Mitchell’s Wolfette or let’s talk about, you know, the Gillette toggle again, let’s bring up the bottom dial, let’s bring up, you know, cool stuff that people really were interested in back then and let’s see if we can bring some new light to it. That was probably the most difficult time was from 2020 to 2022. I’d say it was a lot of where there were some times I was just sitting there and I was like, I don’t know what to do.
Like, I don’t know what to come out with because there’s no new products and there’s just, everybody was kind of like at a standstill. Supplies were very hard. So a lot of, I remember Barrister and Mann couldn’t do aftershave for one of their releases. They had to do like a balm.
A lot of people were just going back and forth, just couldn’t get bottles for aftershave, couldn’t get containers for soap. Some vendors couldn’t get steel for razors. It was just kind of crazy. So I’d say that was the biggest challenge for all of us out there, not just me.
I’d say all the vendors and everything. But for the podcast, it was really hard to come up with the content. So if you see some repetitious stuff during that time, that was probably the reason. It was hard.
It was hard to find stuff. So I wanted to talk about some other cool facts about the podcast that I looked up to. I looked up and did some research and wanted to share with you guys. So over 200 episodes have been released for podcasting on Sharpologist with myself in it, with this being the 199th.
So I couldn’t believe 199 episodes and this is the one. And 200 will be in January of 2026. One thing, I have never used AI for content or show notes. Everything you get is me.
It’s my voice. There’s no AI. There’s no AI for the show notes, and I don’t use AI for researching and developing. Although I have started using it for work, I do use it quite often at my job, and I may start using it soon in the near future.
I did dabble around with AI for the fall seasonal special this year. I found it did kind of help me, but it didn’t work as well as my usual way. So I did kind of work with that, but otherwise AI has never been used on this podcast in 10 years. The cast is streamed all over the world in dozens of countries, and it’s been continuing to increase.
It goes with our number one country, of course, being the United States. Also, I get a lot of information from the UK and from Sweden, believe it or not. Sweden is actually one of the bigger countries that does listen to the podcast. They also are the number three country for purchasing the book that I wrote as well.
Believe it or not, Sweden. I couldn’t believe it. And every show of this podcast has been recorded in the state of Florida. So I have been all over when I travel and stuff, but I just realized the other day that I’ve recorded every single show that I’ve done from either my home or from my car or from somewhere, but it’s all been done in the state of Florida.
So I thought that was cool too. And I want to share some cool links with you guys. So the first show, uh, as a cohost, when I started my first shows in there, my first solo show last episode of what shaving, uh, what shaving news. and I got the first episode of What Shaving Talk to, or the first one that we did.
So, hopefully you guys enjoyed this. If this is something that you liked, I really, I wanted to do this for a while, got all the information together, so I really, I’m really, just really happy to be doing this podcast for 10 years, guys, and I appreciate all of you listening, and week in and week out, and all of you new guys out there, if this is your first podcast, you got a lot, you got 199 episodes to go back on, so you got some time, so good. All right, guys, and to finish off the show for this week, Collector Series Declaration Shave Brushes.
Declaration is a … We talked about the Declaration grooming. These are highly regarded American shave brushes that were hand-tied, the first ones to do so back 10 years ago. When it was rebranded in 2017 as a Declaration Grooming Company, it used to be, formerly it was L&L Grooming with Declaration Brushes, so it kind of brought the company together.
It’s got a cult status among shaving enthusiasts. I have, personally, I have the Nebula B3, so I bought that back in 2017, 2018. I still use it. It’s still controversial.
Controversial not whatever a lot of people think it’s too stretchy. It’s through this I find it to be great I’ve had several other brushes that I’ve bought and let go over the years, but I think That this is a great brush maker, and I think you know I’m gonna miss Scott’s brushes and seeing them released and all that stuff and seeing all the all the craze around it and the ability to get that any brush like you have re knotted by him was also really cool to But just to say a little bit more information, unlike many competitors, I talk about hand-tied knots. Well, technically, all knots are hand-tied, but Scott actually does it himself.
He doesn’t buy a pre-made knot that was tied up and then glued. He ties them himself and then glues them himself and then puts them in the handle. So that’s what made this really a unique brush company. And he would release different batches of hair that he purchased from B1 to B18, I believe is the last one.
And that’s for collectability reasons, B1 is the most valuable. B3 is probably up there as well. I think B7 or B8 is also the best one. So those are also very collectible.
Expect to pay for these brushes probably around, right now, anywhere from $500 to $1,500. Especially for B1s, those go for a lot because that’s the first one. And there are several of, I’m sorry, I forgot to tell you about the handle shapes. He does handle shapes by presence, so you have the Jefferson, Washington, and the Theodore.
The Theodore, which is a little bit of a bigger one, Jefferson being the smaller one, all ranging from, I think, 26 millimeter to 30 millimeter, I think they went up from, give or take. But Declaration Grooming, we salute you. We’re going to miss you out there. Scott, good luck.
And looking forward to seeing all of you guys post some pictures on with your declaration brush or declaration soaps. All right, guys, I know it’s been a little bit of a longer show, but it is an anniversary show, so we had to take a little bit more time. So finally, I thought I was finishing up. I forgot the most important part of the show this week.
Wet shaving New Year’s resolution. That’s right, guys. It is time for your New Year’s resolutions. Time to make the commitments, whether it’s learning a new skill or getting to that bucket list item, what are your resolutions for 2026?
You can send them to me and I’ll share them on the next show. I haven’t even done mine yet, so I’ll share mine on the next show, but I’ll tell you, this is how you do a New Year’s resolution for wet shaving. Make your list, write it out, right? I like to physically write it on a piece of paper with a pen or a pencil, right?
I don’t know why, it gives you a little bit more of a personal touch, makes it a little bit easier to do. Next. Give yourself a timeline. Make sure that you are following up on your news resolution, right?
Give yourself a timeline. Say, okay, I’m going to do this by September. I’m going to do this by October, whatever. Timeline.
And finally, Just like Nike said, do it. Just do it. Make sure you commit to it. If you want to learn how to do a new skill, that’s the easiest one to do.
Just learn. Take time, practice. Set aside the time to do it. If it’s something that you want to buy in your bucket list, example, I want to buy a bottom dial.
Well, that may not happen this year, but keep it in your list. Save up the money that you need to get it, and then get it. Make yourself happy with it. And know that if you don’t accomplish all your wet shaving resolutions, hey, there’s always next year.
You can continue to do it. So it’s not the end of the world. All right, guys. So that’s all that I have for this week.
I am very happy to be doing this for 10 years again. I cannot emphasize that more. But I wanted to remind you guys that our show is presented by sharpologist.com, What Your Father Didn’t Teach You About Shaving. Special thanks to Mark.
Mantic59 for the last 10 years of support on the podcast and for everything that he does for the wet shaving community. Most of all, you guys are listeners. Don’t forget to check out my blog, ShaveStraightAndSafe.com, still live and active. And always feel free to email me at joe.wetshavingnews at gmail.com.
And if you get a chance, if you’re looking for a wet shaving book, don’t forget to check out my book, The Modern Guide to Straight Razor Shaving, available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Pasteur’s Pharmacy in New York City. All right, guys, I will see you next month, couple weeks for the 200th episode. Until then, shave straight, excuse me, sorry, shave safe and shave straight. Bye bye now.
