Sho Brush

The selection of high quality Japanese calligraphy brushes is somewhat lacking in Waterloo it seems, so I decided to give a go at making my own. There are two types of hair used in brushes, with the badger hair being a stiffer brush (which I seem to prefer). I use a badger brush to foam up when I'm shaving, so I bought one of those brushes as a source for my bristles and then planed and drilled and glued up what you see below. It has a semi-octagonal barrel, which is my nod to the appreciation of imperfection in Japanese design. It was also a project that didn't involve any power tools, which is always a nice thing!

So far I'm pretty happy with it. The hairs are much stiffer than the ones in the cheap badger hair brush I had in my collection and the flow of ink seems to be more controllable too. Let's see how it works in the long run once it gets broken in a bit. I'm interested to see what my calligraphy teacher is going to think once she gets back from Japan!