RalynRalyn Horse Hair Shoe Shine Brush, Natural Wood

I have several of these large brushes. Great for Shoes, polish etc. I just bought another for brushing off some older electrical stereo equipment that I am refurbishing...makes a good dust brush. Cant go wrong with this.

Very dense and smooth brush. The only way to get a good shine happening.

I've gone back and forth whether to give this product 4 or 5 stars. It really is a good shoe brush, but as many have stated, it does shed quite a bit. The argument goes back and forth, 'all brushes shed some at the start'...'mine did not shed at all'...'this brush never stops shedding, it's like a long haired dog in summer'...ad nauseum. Well guess what, I bought it, it sheds a bit; after a week of daily use, it looks like the shedding is tapering off (but still losing some hair). However, earlier I bought the same brush but with dark bristles, used it the same way, it never lost a single hair. Go figure. My recommendation, buy the dark bristled Ralyn Professional shine brush. If you need two for different polish colors (like I did) write something on the back of one of them in black sharpie to tell them apart.

This is my first shoe brush, and I love it! I bought it to mostly clean leather purses, not just shoes. but I needed one of these to buff leather things to a shine after using creams, leather conditioners, saddle soap. I always used a cotton cloth, but you can't get into tight crevices with a cloth, nor can you buff very evenly. When I decided to clean and sort all my purses, It was time for a dedicated buffing brush to help.I didn't want to buy several brushes to compare. I have enough stuff in my house, so I read lots of reviews to narrow down my choices. I want to answer the questions I had myself before I bought this brush, that I was left wondering after reading reviews from the top rated shoe brushes, and wish someone had addressed all in one place:1. How stiff/soft are the bristles? Are shoe brushes like nylon scrub brushes? What about a boars hair scrub brush? What about a softer dustpan brush? Are any of these the same or similar?Answer: Not the same at all! Not even remotely. For softness, this brush compares to a shaving brush almost exactly. I bought my husband a fancy badger shaving brush... and apparently, horsehair has the same texture and softness. This is EXACTLY the same for texture and feel if you rub it over your face (which I just did) as a fancy shaving brush.I'm not saying that shaving brushes are horsehair, I have no idea, but the softness is identical. The difference is, the shoe brush has cut ends, the fancy shaving brush has the natural ends, which taper the way an artist brush does, for clean painting edges and application control. Shaving/art/paint brushes mostly use the ends of the hair. The shoe brush hairs are all cut evenly, so it could come from any part of the individual hairs. Maybe they cut the ends off the hair to make artist brushes, and the part that was cut makes shoe brushes? The fact that it's cut doesn't affect softness, it's very soft.If you don't have a shaving brush, then I would compare the softness to a fine bristle paintbrush for oil paints, the very expensive kind, not cheap nylon paintbrushes.3. Why do I need the soft brush for shoes?Answer: The softness is not what makes it special... it's the DENSITY of the bristles. Holy moley there's a ton of hair packed in the brush! Think the density of a large real bristle paintbrush, and then take that same density out a full 8" x 3". There are a bazillion hairs in this brush, way more than any other brush I've ever seen this size. BAZILLIONS of hairs (sorry, not counting hairs for you)! The bristles are DENSE. I mean VERY dense.2. Do I need a dedicated brush for shoes?Answer: I didn't used to think so, thus I just used a soft cloth before... but I SEE a difference now that I have this brush. All those bazillions of hairs? Well, each one slaps against your shoe, and gets followed up by the next hair. When you have BAZILLIONS of hairs slapping one after the other in the same spot/nook/cranny, your shoe's getting cleaned quick. Why did I wait so long to get one of these?!3. Why buy this one? It's twice the price of the Kiwi brush, and Kiwi's been around forever and sells Kiwi shoe products that grandpa probably used (my other brush consideration)?Answer: I picked this one because it was 8" long, and the Kiwi brush had a lot of complaints that it got smaller to 5"-6 long. That only matters because I know that a shoe brush (partly based on the Kiwi reviews of their original size) should be big. I don't want a smaller brush. This is a buffer, and the more bristles you have, the more bristles are hitting one spot when you use it, doing faster and better buffing. I'm old enough to remember shoe shine boys at the train stations when I was a kid, and they all used big brushes. 5"-6" is not a big brush.Does the brush lose lots of hairs in use?Answer: I picked this brush because of a review that said while it shed when new, the Kiwi shed worse. While this brush had complaints about losing hairs too, it lost less hair than the Kiwi brush. I worried before I got it that my brush would lose 1/2 it's hair and go bald after a few uses.After I got it, I wondered why it matters that it loses hairs. This brush is SO DENSE that I can't see how you'd notice it lost any hairs, other than having to pick them up. I can see if you buy this to brush hairs off a coat, which it doesn't do nearly as well as a lint brush, leaving hairs behind would be annoying. It would also be annoying if you use it to brush sticky shoes with new polish on them. But why would you do that? If it's sticky enough for hairs to stick, it's not going to shine for you, so why would you buff?I guess if you are cleaning something, having loose brush hairs to clean up is a pain... but you have to clean up the polish, paste, creams anyway, and all the dried residuals you buffed off the shoe. I'd rather clean up the hairs and get the residue, than leave behind the dirt, dust, and residue because I saw no hairs.That said, I noticed about 5 hairs fall out after I vigorously brushed my hand in all directions over the garbage can when I opened the package (because people said hairs fell out). It could be more fell out that I didn't notice, but if I didn't notice, then it wasn't many. I don't care if hairs fall out every time I use it for the next 10 years anyway, it's so hairy, it's still not going to be bald. I wondered if the complaints about the brush losing hairs was because they got it wet. I have no idea what glue they use, but this does not look like a brush you can use wet (why would you need to wet it to buff shoes?).The handle part is a nice old fashioned looking lightweight wood. No idea what it is, but it's attractive. It says Ralyn Shoe Care printed on top, and 100% horsehair and Made in Israel. I am happy it says Shoe Care on it. Such a small thing, but if I don't use it for a while, it will remind me why I bought it (Shoe Care!).As much rambling as I've done about this brush, you'd think I bought a new car, I'm so excited. Isn't it funny, the little things that make us happy? lol. Anyway, love the brush, and plan to spend many happy hours cleaning leather. I hope you found my review helpful.

Had to chuckle a bit before writing this as the questions Amazon asks on their evaluation form treat the brush as if it were a pair of shoes!That said, the brush is as I had hoped it would be: full sized and of good quality. For my entire lifetime (I'm 76) I have been using a brush my father bought when I was a child. It is a hefty brush with long, soft horsehair bristles. For the sake of convenience I wanted a second one to keep at another location so I bought this one. It's great - a near replica of my old one: full sized with what appear to be good quality bristles. When I first got it I held it over my sink and ran my hand over it vigorously and a few bristles did come out, but I have used it several times since then and have noticed no more lose bristles. It does a great job on shoes and boots, too. It seems to be a good value at the price and I'm quite happy with it.