HELP!! how to fix bent brush's

I keep all my best brush&#;s I use all the time in a plastic brush holder box so the brush bristles never touch anything. I carry this everywhere with me in a backpack. I have not painted for a few weeks but it is how I make my money normally so they are very important to me. I started to paint tonight and found all of my brush&#;s had came loose in the plastic brush box and were all jammed in different ways up against end of box and bristles bent/splayed out. about 7 brush&#;s. water will not make them come back to a point or come un-bent. they could have been like that 3 weeks or so.
I have a ton of work. I need them bad. What can I do to fix them? I tried soap, did not work. I tried straight paint, did not work.
Got any ideas to straighten them out and get a point and re-train them?HELP

Goto Cohwa to know more.

Most are synthetic escoda, Raphel etc. and couple real small ones are sable 30 or 40yo like new.

I have just been thrown out of the inn where I was staying, naked as a worm. Claude Monet

Oh, yikes, Joe, what a disaster!

Agree with Jan, if you can mold the sables into the shape they need to be, they&#;ll stay that way. Try regular bar soap &#; get some off the bar as thick and gooey as possible, enough to sort of glue the hairs together. Shape them nice and straight. It&#;s soap, so no worries about harm done to the brush. Let the soap &#;glue&#; harden. Not sure how long you&#;d have to keep it that way to train the hairs straight again &#; overnight maybe? Remember, it&#;s hair. If you can train it to be crooked, you can train it to be the proper shape again. Obviously, rinse it REALLY well before using.

For the synthetics, I&#;ve never used the hot water trick but this is not the first time I&#;ve heard it. Try it out. I don&#;t have a messed up synthetic handy or I&#;d do it myself and report back.

If you want to learn more, please visit our website Bent Head Paint Brushes.

Good luck, let us know how it goes!

What jan said, but remember it&#;s important to know if they are real hair ( which is much like your paper or your own hair when you forget to comb it out of the shower, it keeps its shape it dries in ) or plastic ( nylon or polyester which is what synthetics are made out of ) which hot water helps the most.

Careful on soaps, some have additives which aren&#;t good for watercolor brushes. Look at the ingredients and avoid anything that has a complicated word ending with &#;cone&#; ( especially shampoos this clogs up the brushes ability to carry water ), as well as harsh laundry detergents. If you can you really want to research this, or use something like masters brush cleaner.

I&#;d go ahead and get some gum arabic next chance you get. For my brushes I am not using, I go ahead and dilute some gum arabic ( you only need a tiny bit ) and dip the brushes in and shape them. This is how you buy them in the store and ensures they keep a nice sharp tip &#; just rewet them to let the gum arabic dissolve away.

If it&#;s urgent, I&#;d say get your brushes wet and shape them with your fingers, this might be enough to fix them. If stubborn then take some paper towels and wrap them so they reinforce the point of your brush. Let them dry like this. This won&#;t work as well as gum arabic or lots of soap, but it basically is the opposite of what caused them to bend.

It can take a while for the brush to get trained back to a good tip, you might just be stuck with bent brushes &#; just keep training them into a nice tip when they dry, and as soon as possible get some gum arabic which is the best approach.

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