Are hard / triple milled soaps generally more difficult to use with hard water? Are any hard soaps particularly good with hard water?

[jimmyrules712]

My tap water is about as hard as water can get. All of my sinks and toilets literally have rings from the mineral deposits left behind.

I've tried a few triple milled / hard soaps and never got a great lather from any of them, including Mitchell's Wool Fat, DR Harris, Tabac, and Speick. Perhaps my loading method could be improved on but I've tried emulating what I see in videos online and still seem to get much worse results.

Meanwhile nearly every soft soap and cream I use, including cheaper soaps that are perceived to be lower in quality, provides fantastic lather. This list includes Proraso, TOBS, Arko, RazoRock, Cella, B&M (Omnibus) etc.

I haven't tried some of the higher end hard soaps like MDC or SV because I'm worried it would just be a waste of money. Should I give up on hard soaps and just stick with the soft options that I know work with my water? Are there any hard / triple milled soaps that are known to work well with really hard water?

 

[spacemonkey42]

Another option if you have some triple-milled pucks - grate them! I got that advice here and it made loading so much easier. I too have hard water.

Grate the puck and press that into some container to load from. I went from having to load for minutes down to about a one-minute load. Why not try it? It can't hurt (unless you scrape your fingers on the grater).

 

[FarmerTan]

And it also cannot hurt to try using bottled water my friend.

 

[Roy]

I've hard water but never had trouble lathering any soap. Even mwf. Puzzled.

 

[VerbaVolant]

"Hard" is an adjective and I like numbers instead.
How hard is your tap water? If you live in NA you can get this information from your municipality website, under utilities and water quality.
At my current residence water hardness is 110-130 mg/L (5-7 gpg of total hardness). Sometimes they report hardness being at 150 mg/L. Hard water is considered around 200 mg/L.
At this hardness I don't have any issues lathering any soaps/creams. However, scaling is awful and cannot really explain it.

 

[brucered]

I've never had our water tested, but it's listed at about 82ppm on average for our city, so medium hardness.

No special water needed, no specialty footwear or hat needed, no set number of counterclockwise swirls needed, no ceremonial dances needed.

I'm using Tabac right now and just finished a year with PdP. No issues.

The answer......load longer.

 

[slimshavy]

My in laws' water is extremely hard; everything gets clogged up with the deposits constantly. But I've brought Em's Place soaps (the glycerine rounds) and they lather up easy and slick. I've even forgotten my brush and lathered with a kitchen basting brush there and it was the same story, thick and easy to produce.

The soap is cheap too, and I order two at a time because the shipping cost is the same for two as one, so why not. Each puck probably lasts me about six months (I only use one soap at a time until it's done).

 

[EclipseRedRing]

I have always assumed that soft water makes lathering much easier simply because I have no problems lathering any soap and I live in an area with very soft water at below 50ppm. Now I think about it I have never had lathering problems while travelling in any part of the world and some of those places must surely have hard water. I use only vintage triple milled soaps, and I really enjoy face lathering vigorously with plenty of soap - maybe that is the key.

 

[NorthernSoul]

Some soaps have chelating agents that help diminish the effects of hard water. Otherwise, you may have to load more soap to deal with the problem.

A gallon of deionized water from the grocery store is probably less than a dollar (or you can collect some rainwater in a container). That will take care of it.

Some people use a bit of citric acid powder, as is used in home canning. That will have the effect of softening the water.

 

[Ron R]

I would just use a atomizer bottle mister with distilled water, a bottle costs about $1.60 and will last about 1 year and it is about as good as it gets. Atomizer or Mister can be more precise for some of the best lathering I have found. I still occasionally dip brush tips or hand dripping water works OK as well but a mister does a very nice job IMO. It does kind of get out of the traditional way of making lather but lots of folks do use misters nowadays.

Using a water mister to improve your lather!

I have been making a reasonable lather for years just by dipping the tips in water and stirring brush in a bowl. I was watching IAMCDB on Youtube videos and Chris can crank out a nice hydrated lather. So I had a small 50 ml sprayer and it pushes out a fine mist and thought why not and I like to...

www.badgerandblade.com

Have some great shaves!

 

[Medivh]

I don't know how hard the water in my area is, but when I moved for a couple of months in a different area, the water there felt like magical. Making lather was never an issue for me, unless I use some of my floppy badger brushes, which I hate with passion, but I did notice that making lather in that other place was not only easier and much faster, (I do face lather) but my brush was probably holding (and I kid you not) enough lather so I can do at least 2 more 3 pass shaves. It was exploding with lather and my face was like Santa and all of that with only a few swirls on the soap and a little work on my face.

The other thing that I've noticed was that I was able to soften my beard within a few minutes under the shower without doing any crazy prep and in comparison in my home area, even after a 10-15 (or more) minute shower my beard still feels tough. The shaves were nothing less than 10/10 every single time no matter which razor I pick, but there was one major issue. After each shave, I was getting at least one ingrown hair at a random location. Every, single, time!

I guess the shaves were that good and I was going a bit closer than usual or maybe it was something else, but 2 of the ingrown hairs that I've had were the worst in my life!

 

[gsurko]

Why don’t people with such hard water not get a water softener?

 

[FarmerTan]

Why don’t people with such hard water not get a water softener?

Expense was my excuse. Then I made the mistake of opening the door to a salesman that sold me a water softener for the whole house, and a reverse osmosis thingy for the kitchen sink for drinking water.

Not cheap, but everytime I go on vacation I'm glad to come home to my soft water. No soap scum!

Wish that salesman had knocked on my door years earlier doggone!

 

[samhain666]

Well for me best was Palmolive stick and Tabac
Sadly Palmolive is discontiued and Tabac reformulated and new formula sadly sux

 

[Dtownvino]

Our water is super hard - there is a quarry 1.5 miles from our home and we are known to have some of the hardest water in the US (Chester County, PA).

High End Ethos lathers excellent, period. MdC lathers very well, too.

Mid range B&M Omnibus, Murphy and McNeil, Stirling (sheep and regular) all lather well for me.

Low range Cella and Proraso never an issue.

I use a badger and tap water. All badger knots are Shavemac and Lee Sabini. I use a CC copper bowl. I’ve wasted thousands on soaps and hope you can save some money with this post.

 

[musicman1951]

I've read about people using distilled water. I buy it by the gallon for my CPAP and it's a pretty cheap experiment.

For what it's worth: MdC and Canada Shave Soap are my easiest loading soaps.

 

[jimmyrules712]

Our water is super hard - there is a quarry 1.5 miles from our home and we are known to have some of the hardest water in the US (Chester County, PA).

High End Ethos lathers excellent, period. MdC lathers very well, too.

Mid range B&M Omnibus, Murphy and McNeil, Stirling (sheep and regular) all lather well for me.

Low range Cella and Proraso never an issue.

I use a badger and tap water. All badger knots are Shavemac and Lee Sabini. I use a CC copper bowl. I’ve wasted thousands on soaps and hope you can save some money with this post.

I appreciate this info. I've done a good amount of testing myself. I have also found Cella, Proraso, and B&M Omnibus to work excellent. I didn't find Stirling regular to work that great (haven't tried sheep), that's the only difference I experienced. I have not tried Ethos, MdC, or Murphy & McNeil yet so I'll add those to my list.

I also found Zingari Man Sego to work really well, RazoRock Dead Sea was excellent, Declaration Grooming Milksteak was decent (not as good as Sego or Omnibus but maybe a bit better than Cella & Proraso) and the regular RazoRock super tallow formula was also pretty good (on par with Cella & Proraso).

I did not get very good performance from Tabac (new non-tallow formula), Mitchells Wool Fat, Speick Stick, Ariana & Evans K2e, or the current Noble Otter base.

I tried a puck of DR Harris soap and got a decent lather the first time and mediocre every time I tried after that. Not sure what I did different the first time but after too many failed attempts after decided it wasn't worth the work to figure out.

 

[Dtownvino]

I appreciate this info. I've done a good amount of testing myself. I have also found Cella, Proraso, and B&M Omnibus to work excellent. I didn't find Stirling regular to work that great (haven't tried sheep), that's the only difference I experienced. I have not tried Ethos, MdC, or Murphy & McNeil yet so I'll add those to my list.

I also found Zingari Man Sego to work really well, RazoRock Dead Sea was excellent, Declaration Grooming Milksteak was decent (not as good as Sego or Omnibus but maybe a bit better than Cella & Proraso) and the regular RazoRock super tallow formula was also pretty good (on par with Cella & Proraso).

I did not get very good performance from Tabac (new non-tallow formula), Mitchells Wool Fat, Speick Stick, Ariana & Evans K2e, or the current Noble Otter base.

I tried a puck of DR Harris soap and got a decent lather the first time and mediocre every time I tried after that. Not sure what I did different the first time but after too many failed attempts after decided it wasn't worth the work to figure out.

I have found that high fat content (super fatted) soaps lather more poorly with hard water. My results improve with distilled water.

 

[FarmerTan]

I have found that high fat content (super farted) soaps lather more poorly with hard water. My results improve with distilled water.

Your werds in parentheses remind me of a saying my dad used to say about a cheap person.....

 

[Darth Scandalous]

I have found that high fat content (super farted) soaps lather more poorly with hard water. My results improve with distilled water.

Not familiar with *that* manufacturing process but I'll take your word for it.