No shampoo for you! Advantages of the distilled water shave...

Hello everyone,

I decided right off the bat when I began wetshaving that I wanted to use only distilled water for the lather & brush since my tap water is very hard. So here's my shave process:

• Pour about a pint of distilled water into an old coffee maker glass carafe (all metal & plastic fittings removed)
• Microwave said carafe for 1:30 to 2 minutes
• Fill double-walled stainless shaving bowl with water, set atop carafe, and leave brush to soak during shower
• Face prep in shower
• Shave, etc....
• Rinse brush at least three times in the bowl with batches of the distilled water (great for DE blades, also)
• Vigorously shake dry and hang brush upside down

The benefits of this approach so far are obvious: Fantastic lather (even Kent/MWF is easy) and a pristine brush. In fact I can't even imagine needing to do any shampoo (let alone borax) to maintain it. It is really that clean!

I ran out of distilled water one morning and used bottled drinking water instead. The brush was much more difficult to rinse and there was some soap residue on the handle that never had occurred using distilled.

I hope this may be useful to someone who struggles with hard water. A gallon of distilled according to what I describe above lasts one week (seven shaves), which isn't onerous. Enjoy!

My brushes have never been exposed to minerals. I have used Distilled water with my chubby 3 Manchruian, chubby 3 two band and M&F 2xl finest since day one.

Only my Crabtree & Evelyn was used with tap water.

It's a whole different shave.

But it takes SO MUCH MORE water to rinse.

Most bottled drinking water is simply reverse osmosis treated water with some minerals added to taste. It's very soft and not that far from distilled.

I have about the hardest water you can have but with a water softener soap lathers like crazy. I've not tried distilled however I can't imagine anything lathering more and if it did it would be overkill to me and not worth the added expense. Most typical minerals in water just wash away anyway and leave no trace behind. Only the offending ones cause problems.

Boy, living in Vancouver, you forget how soft and wonderful our water is for lathering soaps. i empathize with all of you that have hard water. i have never had an issue with lathering any soap.
Enjoy the distilled water.