Bombshell Paddle Brush — Medium, 8¼″ Boar & Ball Tip

The smallest of the three paddles at eight and a quarter inches, and the only one with boar in it. That makes it a different tool from the other two rather than just a smaller version.

Boar and white nylon ball tips

Two bristle types doing two jobs.

The white nylon pins are ball-tipped — a small rounded bead moulded onto the end of each one. A ball tip rides over the scalp instead of digging into it, which is what makes a dense paddle comfortable to use with any pressure at all. They also part the hair and get through tangles, because nylon is stiff enough to push a knot apart rather than catching in it.

The boar is the reason to choose this one. Boar sits close in structure to human hair and carries the scalp's own oil down the strand. That is where the shine comes from — it is your own oil being moved down the length, not anything being added to it. The other two paddles are nylon only; they detangle and smooth, but they do not do this.

So the nylon gets through the hair and the boar polishes what it leaves behind, in the same pass.

The size

Eight and a quarter inches makes it the one that fits in a bag, a drawer or a hand that finds a ten-inch brush unwieldy. It is also the easiest of the three to use on someone else — on a child, for instance, where a big paddle is more brush than the head needs.

For a full head of very long hair, the larger paddles cover more ground per pass and will be quicker.

The cushion

The bristles sit in a flexible cushioned pad rather than a solid back. The pad gives as the brush passes over the curve of the skull, so the bristles stay in contact instead of skidding off the high points, and any snag lifts the pad rather than pulling at the hair.

It is also the part that will fail first if you abuse it. Do not press hard. A paddle brush is not a tool you lean on.

How to use it

Start at the ends, not the roots. Take the bottom two inches, work the tangles out of those, then move up an inch and repeat. Working from the top down drags every tangle in the length into one knot at the bottom, which is where breakage comes from.

Once it is untangled, long slow passes from root to end on dry hair. That is the pass that does the polishing, and it is the one worth taking your time over.

Be gentler on wet hair. Hair is at its most fragile wet.

Looking after it

Clear the shed hair out of the pad regularly. Boar holds onto shed hair more than nylon does, so this one needs clearing more often than the other two.

Do not soak it. Water gets into the cushion, and it does not come back out.

Where it came from

Peter Louis spent twenty-three years behind a chair in Manhattan — a salon on 57th Street, and years of blowouts before that, nine in the morning until ten at night. A supplier would bring a sample, it got used on clients, and it went back with a list of what was still wrong. That went on for years until one came back right.