Filberts Part 3

Dr Franklyn: It was a journey to say the least - blowing paint through bamboo, and bone tubes, the pounding and chewing of twigs aboriginal style, good brushes - but I made myself ill a few times.
Part of my diet was snaring small squirrel like animals, a kind of rock hopping rat, I looked the species up years later. I began binding hairs and small strips of fur to handles - there always seemed to be plenty of binding wire or nylon rope flotsam to strip down to fibres, for binding brush hairs too - I tried it all - but here's the catch - I could never make a satisfactory flat dome headed brush - the Filbert.
Silly really - but It was what I wanted - isn't always the way. By this time I had been painting many rocks and cliff patches using all kinds of techniques, my kit got quite large - but I found I only needed three different size brushes and two kinds of blowing tube to do it all - and the shape of those brushes had to be Filbert.

Me: (Laughing) I use Filberts for everything just about, y'get great line using the edge and good cover using the flat.

Dr Franklyn: Exactly - and that was the tool I needed - a versatile tool in a couple of sizes - but I could never quite make them as I wanted. For trimming, an extremely sharp tool is difficult to make - I made some good blades from bits of Flotsam - but never anything to give the cleanest cut on a short curve. I put together naturally curving hairs, the proper way of manufacture - into tree resin, very delicate work - but all in all - by perseverance I made a few good specialised Filberts - so you might say I wildly became obsessed by this - to my mind - king of the brush shapes.