I’ve got rollers that are older than I am, I inherited a few, bought a few at yard sales and have bought some new. If you take care of them they last and last. Every year I tend to add a few new brayers to my collection at work, they get damaged, but more often than not, someone borrows them from my studio space and I need to replace them.

Recently all but one of my 4 inch soft rubber brayers disappeared out of my studio space. I used to have a dozen. Now I have ONE!!!! I attempted to get people to return them, but alas, they are gone. This led me to a search for replacements.

My solid favorite for student work has always been the speedball soft pink rubber brayer. But the 4inch model with the plastic handle has doubled in price recently. I assume due to tarrifs, and I honestly didn’t want to spend that much of my budget replacing shit I already bought. So I searched on Amazon and found one that had decent reviews and ordered one, with a plan of returning it if it sucked and ordering 7 more if it was good.

Y’all I hit on a good one. This thing  has softer red rubber compared to the speedball and is a full $6 cheaper. The handle is wood and plated steel and it rolls so smoothly. Winner Winner.

It’s also available in a 6 inch model.

If you are interested, I use these black hard rubber brayers for my gel plates. I prefer the hard rubber for gel plates because they are easier to clean and get just as good a layer of acrylic paint onto the gel plate as a soft rubber roller.