The Little World

There is a name for brushes; hairy sticks. Because that is what they are. And they do very basic hairy things…

There is a current phrase – ” hairy stick ” – used to describe paint brushes – that is both humorous and accurate. Because that’s what the wretched things really are.

Oh, there are different grades and classes of brushes, and you can pay any price you care to invent. There are also any number of products to clean and condition them and rituals to perform. Ignore these at your peril.

Yet the things are so basic…and they do such a basic set of actions:

a. They suck up a fluid by capillary action.
b. They release it by wiping onto a surface that is more attractive than the fibre of which they are made.

In the process they must be resistant to the vehicle or solvents they carry and flexible enough to bend somewhat to the surface they encounter. Yet they inevitably lose bristles and splay out at the tip…no matter what care is taken. They can poke their load of paint into the wrong place as easily as they can into the correct one. We need a re-think.

With the chemistry of rubbers and polymers, would it be possible to make a pointed foam brush on a very small scale? Like a pointed rubber gum stimulator that you use in between your teeth to prevent gum disease? Or the same design with a central hollow or reservoir that would hold the paint? I’d be prepared to have a small rubber paint tip that was held in a chuck and could be discarded after use.

Or a very small roller…much on the same lines as the big ones people use for house painting?

I already make use of cocktail sticks as paint applicators but find they cannot carry much paint. Perhaps it’s time to do some whittling and see what I can come up with.