Not long ago I won a beautiful brush handle from Peter at Wolf Whiskers in a charity raffle. It came with a great synthetic knot, but it was lofted too short for me. I decided to remove it so I can put something else in.
I emailed Peter and he confirmed that all of his brushes are assembled with epoxy. I didn't want to risk steaming the handle, but the Discord chat convinced me to try a 5 minute steam, which I did... 5 minutes isn't long, and it didn't work.
Not wanting to further risk a total failure (the handle is in 2 pieces, plus it has a coin in the bottom), I went back to plan A - mechanical destruction.
Picture 1: I used a box cutter with a fresh blade to slice most of the hair off
Picture 2: I used a combination of a small cutoff wheel and a grinder bit on a Dremel tool and started slowly chipping away at things.
Picture 3: This bit worked the absolute best. It's small, so it took a while. It also created TONS of dust, so I had to do this outside.
Picture 4: This is pretty much the end result. It was very difficult to know when to stop. The end of the knot/epoxy and beginning of "handle" was never really obvious. In the end, the hole was 15.5mm deep, and 26.5mm wide.
I did mess it up in a few spots. The keyless chuck on the dremel has some knurling which made contact with the ferule a few times, despite me trying to be careful. I was able to buff them a little bit and they're only noticeable if you're looking closely at it.
I still haven't decided which knot to put in it, but it's a beautiful handle!