A couple of years ago I posted a video of a simple brush sequence, and we’ve sold a lot of brushes based on that video. It must have been good marketing. But in the last two years we’ve continued to work with different materials, and that old video is now a lie. We use other brushes now. It’s not that the brush sequence I proposed two years ago doesn’t work anymore. Just that we’ve got some new stuff from Red Creek that we like more.
Red Creek is a company that we love to work with, and it’s not because of their timely deliveries (it’s like pulling teeth sometimes). It’s because K-G Lundvist, the founder and owner, is just a great guy with great ideas who never stops trying to do better. It’s a small company refusing to take short-cuts, producing products themselves using the best materials. These are not brushes that you can find on alibaba.com, and it does make a difference.
In the past couple of years I’ve been amazed at the differences between brushes that appear to be quite similar. We’ve got eight or ten different fine steel hand brushes here from Swix, Holmenkol, Red Creek, Ski*Go, Rex, Vauhti and others. While many of these brushes are clearly variations on a theme, the differences are alarming. Differences in bristle material, diameter, length, cluster density, and cluster distribution all combine to create very different products. Along with functionality, there are big differences in the durability of the brushes. Some of the brushes seem to wear-out really fast, and are mostly useless after half a season of daily use. We’ve selected brushes that seem to last very well, and should serve well for many seasons.
Brush preference is a matter of opinion. You can do good work on skis with a wide variety of brushes from a lot of different manufacturers. I can’t claim that I make faster skis with these brushes than with other brushes, but tools matter to me. We work with Red Creek because they make the tools I want to use.
I’ll be updating the webstore items and descriptions in the next few days, and will have a new brush-kit offering with more options than before. If I can figure out how to set it up.