Thread: no more lather. help

i moved deep into the california coastal redwoods and we live so far off the grid that we have to get our water from a spring. it is very very hard water with a ton of calcium. in fact i have to boil vinegar every month in my tea pot just to get the calcium deposits out of the tea pot since i drink so much tea. since moving there i cant seem to get a good lather. when i lived in the city it was easy to make lather and only took a minute or two with not much effort. now i can work hard for several minutes and its not lathering like it used to. itll be soapy and not stick. i have tried cream, glycerin soaps as well as hard pucks and nothing really seems to work great. anyone know what im doing wrong or what i have to change? not really wanting to carry bottle water all the way up the hill, its quite a steep and long hike and im not a sherpa!

Go to town, about a 3 hour trip from were you say you are and buy your self a pitcher type water filter and use that just for your shaving cream. If you purshase enough filters you should be good through the rest of the winter.
bottled water is heavey and expensive, so I would not reccomend it.

Hope that gives you a glimer of hope for your problem.

Most Sincerely, tinkersd of SRP!

+1 to the above. Another thing that will help is to add a few drops of glycerine to the lather.

Boiling the water might help - if you boil a kettle and leave it to cool down to comfortable shaving temperature, and then pour enough into your mug/scuttle/bowl to make lather, some of the lime will have precipitated and settled out. Pour from the kettle gently to avoid stirring it up. That might be enough to make a difference. If not, boiling the same water a few times, letting the lime settle out between each boiling should work. (Pour from kettle -> container, leave to cool, and pour the settled water back into the kettle leaving the dregs with the lime.) A bit laborious though.

(Ah, found link: How to Soften Hard Water: 8 steps - wikiHow)

Our water here is just as hard as you describe....

However, I have no problems lathering stuff like Tabac soap or Martin de Candre. It goes to show that a quality soap is hard to beat!

Time to grow a grizzley mountain man beard methinks!

the move sounds really cool. I must say I kind of wanted to hear more about the new place rather than speak about the lather lol

Originally Posted by corduroylion

i moved deep into the california coastal redwoods and we live so far off the grid that we have to get our water from a spring. it is very very hard water with a ton of calcium. in fact i have to boil vinegar every month in my tea pot just to get the calcium deposits out of the tea pot since i drink so much tea. since moving there i cant seem to get a good lather. when i lived in the city it was easy to make lather and only took a minute or two with not much effort. now i can work hard for several minutes and its not lathering like it used to. itll be soapy and not stick. i have tried cream, glycerin soaps as well as hard pucks and nothing really seems to work great. anyone know what im doing wrong or what i have to change? not really wanting to carry bottle water all the way up the hill, its quite a steep and long hike and im not a sherpa!

Maybe try a brita water filter?

thanks guys!!! im going to pick up one of those brita water filters and in the mean time ive tried the glycerin mixed with shave cream and for now thats getting me by!!! you guys are awesome!! sleekandsmooth ill email you about my move!

Have you tried first creating a lather concentrate with minimal water, then building the lather by gradually adding small amounts of water until you have the volume you require?