How to kill your paint brushes.

[Dileon]

1. Let the brush rest on the bottom of your water jar or cleaner. This force the bristles to fan out or deforms them to a bent shape.
2. Take your finger nails and try to scrap out old paint. Bristles will break, split, bend and curl. Now you got a fuzzy brush.
3. Use your brushes for anything but what they are made for ...the worst is ceramics, cement, rough wood. Anything that is abrasive will make split ends and break the bristles of a brush.
4. Scrub paint into your wood, this will break and fan out bristles....this is what cheap brushes are for.
5. Failure to properly clean brushes after your finish. This means soap and water too....and drying properly.
6. Use really hot water, this is really hard on the whole brush, the glue that holds together the bristles together.
7. Failure to form brushes back into the proper shape while wet.
8. Keep brushes in canvass holder, this will bend and break bristles. Like your chisels, brushes need to be stored in manner where the bristles do not touch anything including each other.
9. Let paint dry in the brushes....this often means the trash can. There are a few brush cleaners that can be bought a good art supply stores.
10. Buying cheap brushes or buying very expensive ones. Cheap brushes loose the hairs....expensive ones need special, special care and you have to be willing to work extra hard to preserve them.
11. Use your fingers to pull out loose hairs. This is bad, bad...not only does it break up the glue that holds your bristles together, it stress the bristles to a nice fuzzy mess. Never pull hairs out, cut them out near the metal holder, I use nail clipper or very sharp nose hair clippers.
12. Use the wrong brush for the wrong paint. Oil brushes are used for oil....and I recommend a conditioner. Watercolors must have a very soft brushes and etc..
13. Use any kind of scrubbing movement on any surface in order to clean the brush....yes I am guilty....I have killed many of brushes using these methods. When you clean a brush you softly wipe out excess paint, then you use the cleaner while never touching the sides or bottom of the jar.
14. Use the brush with a glue based gel....I just killed one of my old, old brushes using it for a scrapbook paste.... I cleaned it, and it was hard as rock the next day

[Nancy-G]

You said that right! .... great list of suggestions. Thanks.

My addition is to keep cats away from them. For some reason my cats want to "play" with brushes (the real hair ones only) ... they carry them all over the place.

[jimmy joe]

Guilty on many counts when using my cheap one's . I use them and abuse them . I am a lot more careful with the one's I a decent price for . I like having the cheap one's just for the purpose of using them for all these things you aren't supposed to use them for !

[SeaLeveler]

Thanks for the rules.I am guilty of most of them.
Tony

[Dileon]

It is really cute but true about cats and especially dogs, I got a brush handle that was chewed major by the dog, but I kept it because it is a really good oil brush.

[Eddy-Smiles]

I'll be darned! And here I thought that's exactly how paint brushes were supposed to be taken care of! I'm with Jimmy Joe! I think that's why Michaels has a $1.00 brush tub so that those of us who commit mayhem on brushes can just throw them away and start anew every other project or so!

[Dan S]

I have a question. one of the causes for the death of good brushes is paint accumulation near the ferrel. This will also fan out the bristels. Any suggestions? I do use a good brush cleaner.

Thanks,
Dan

[W.duBois]

I think this should be sticky'ed!

[toycarver]

Dan, only thing I know of is try real hard not to get the paint up to the level of the ferrel to start with. If you do get it in there, clean it out immediately with your favorite brush cleaner and water. I was shown to put some cleaner in my palm and then gently, with the brush nearly flat, work the cleaner up to the ferrel by moving brush side to side, then rinse out. That is the way I clean all my brushes.

[Dan S]

Thanks, I'll try to keep an eye on that,
Dan