Airport waiting times are a drag, and the same shops over and over again rarely produce anything worthwhile. On a surprising occasion one turned up a ridiculously overpriced bamboo handled hairbrush, found by my partner. It looked like it would be reasonably easy to replicate and be improved upon. Quite a simple bamboo shape with a space routed out for a plastic brush. A pretty rough finish for a simple object.

I could do better, im sure.

Materials:
Cheap hairbrush
Random bit of wood
Two-part resin

Tools:
Axe
Knife
Chisel
Sandpaper
Oil (to finish)

Step 1: Roughing It Out

I wanted to go for a bit more of well formed shape than the piece that gave me the initial idea.
I started by tracing the outline of the brush onto the wooden block; i already had a pretty decent idea of the shape I wanted so only really used this as a rough guide to ensure that the wood was large enough to fit the brush head.
As with most things I make, and pretty much exactly as you would make a wooden spoon, the bulk of the wood was stripped away with an axe then some finer shaping was done with a knife. Corners rounded off and handle smoothed out. Always making sure the wood remains larger than the brush head.
I wanted to keep some of the bark on the back side of the brush, for decoration.

Step 2: Hollowing Out

Clamped solidly in vice it doesn't take long to remove enough material to seat the brush head. What did take a little while was getting the fit just right so that it sat flush and level at all points. I eventually used a rotary tool with sanding bit to strip away the back of the brush head to get it to fit better within the cavity.
The next step is to glue the brush head into the handle, I used a two-part epoxy resin because its what i happened to have on-hand.

Step 3: Sanding and Finishing

Now its all set you can clean off any excess glue strands and begin to sand smooth the wood.
A quick run over with the rotary sanding bit too off any of the remaining rough patches or bumps from the rough shaping. I then moved through the grits to a super fine sanding sponge.

After a quick wipe over with oil and a rub down you're ready to go.