Do People Really Use These???

Lapis brushes are awesome.

Yeah I've brushed off greasier than normal holds on the way down from routes before. At the same time I normally only use brushes inside and to brush off tick marks left by others outside. So yes I would say I use the brush loop thingy-ma-chiger.

I use brushes and carry them on my chalkbag for 3 things:

1. Cleaning holds nobody 's ever grabbed before.
2. Cleaning chalk from holds that have so much chalk that the friction is reduced.
3. Removing tic marks: if a route has tic marks it's not possible to onsight and with tic marks the best you can do your first time is a lowly master-beta flash.

Try it sometime - a route with ticks is way easier and you might as well subtract a couple of letter grades for a route with tics. Yeah, figuring out what to do is part of the fun of climbing, and tic marks largely remove this part of the fun. Brush off your tics (or even better send hard without tics) and let others enjoy the challenge of exploration.

Organic puts a sleeve of elastic on their standard chalk bags as a brush holder. I think that's really good at holding it on there. I don't use the brush much for routes, since I don't climb on rope at a level where it makes much difference, but I've used it quite a bit for cleaning boulders that have not been attempted that season (if ever).

I've found that, since bouldering can concentrate a lot of oomph in to 10 feet of climbing, the average climber encounters situations where brushing (and quality of rubber, etc) makes a difference a lot more often bouldering than on a rope.

I'm not too enthusiastic about the brush holders on most chalk buckets I've seen.

Any popular sport climbing area should have people brushing.

One note about the brush holder on chalk bags: I've lost many a M16 brush from brush holders that are too loose. It sucks.

YOu guys use chalk?

LOL

Topher, I think you are spot on with the tick mark comment. Ticks do make routs quite a bit easier. It basicly istills the rout down to a gym climb. Knowing exactly where you need to go immediately. Probably for us old school folks, enjoying the process, reading the rock, and using some old fashion problem solving is part of the fun. I really dont understand ticks. Yeah if you want to beta flash the rout sure have some people tick some things. But if you want to onsight or redpoint the thing no ticks are neccesarry. Rock is not a monolithic structure that has no variance in shape, texture and look. If you need to know where a foot is o OK at the rock. Find the feature. Look around it to see what the ROCK looks like. Remember what the foot looks like and where it is. Same with hands. It's the white spot with the hold. Remember what the rock looks like around it. Remember the move remember the body position. Once again no need for ticks.
In place of ticks just use rock features as reference points. It is no different. If the foot is a black pebble in brown rock look for the black pebble. If the holdnis a sidepull around the back of a block look for the block and look for a ripple on the block that is a locator for the hold. No ticks. Unless you want to be a a weenie.