Hard water-v-Triple Milled-v-Glycerin soaps

[miamimoe]

OK, here is a question for all of you soap mavens out there. Here, the water is very hard. I use a Brita pitcher to filter the the tap water, and that is what I use to soak my brush after the water has been heated in an electric kettle.

I have noticed that with glycerin soaps, such as VDH Deluxe, and SCS that the soap lathers fairly easily. Triple milled soaps, such as Trumper's Rose that I used yesterday, require a lot more work. I did soak the Trumper's in very hot water while I showered, then poured it off, and lathered from that.

Creams are even easier, which has led me to using creams more than soaps. However, I do enjoy the triple milled soaps and want to purchase more. Given that there I have no water softener for the residence, am I hoping against hope? Any and all advice would be appreciated.

P/S. I am using a Simpsons Colonel X2l in "best badger" which has a good amount of backbone, and the tips are mildly "scritchy" so loading the brush is not the problem.

 

[cymric]

I have noticed that with glycerin soaps, such as VDH Deluxe, and SCS that the soap lathers fairly easily. Triple milled soaps, such as Trumper's Rose that I used yesterday, require a lot more work. I did soak the Trumper's in very hot water while I showered, then poured it off, and lathered from that.

The issue is not with water temperature, but with the hardness. VDH and SCS are rich in what a chemist would refer to as non-ionic surfactants, meaning substances which lower the surface tension of (in this case) water without the use of ions.

That still doesn't say an awful lot, so here it is in even more understandable language: the soap you use in shaving soap is the crucial component to make lather. Without it, air cannot remain trapped in a body of water in any appreciable amounts. The major troublemaker here is the water surface, which has a strong tendency to pull itself together to form as small a surface as possible. With lots of air bubbles the surface area quickly takes on surprisingly high values, and water simply cannot sustain this area without outside help. A soap or surfactant 'hides' the surface of the water from itself, thus allowing water to curve around bubbles, and thus forming lather. Surfactants come in various shapes and sizes, and the important distinction here is either with a charged end—think of a sewing pin—or without one.

The problem is that water hardness, charged particles themselves, locks onto charged ends, forming a gooey substance in the process which is incapable of acting as an intermediary between air bubble and main water body. In other words: kiss a good lather goodbye. With a surfactant/soap without such charged ends, the hardness cannot take out the soap from the lather, thus allowing the surfactant to continue with its work, and hey presto, lather.

If you are looking for a triple milled soap based on fatty acid surfactants (recognisable by a long list of ... tallowate, ... palmate, ... palm kernelate, ... cocoate or coconut acid, ... stearate or stearic acid, myristic acid, lauric acid, and various others) you should also look for so-called chelating agents. These compounds have a serious crush on the charged particles water hardness, and once they capture a hardness particle they will not relinquish their prey. The result is that the water is made softer in situ, although they of course cannot prevent all hardness in water from bonding with a soap molecule. It's basically a race who gets at the hardness first: many chelating agents win, others lose. Whether or not they present in sufficient amounts to deal with your water is a matter of experimenting. You want to look for tetrasodium EDTA and tetrasodium etidronate in the ingredient lists.

Alternatively, you could really load up on soaps. The soap itself then acts as the chelating agent, but if there is too much hardness the gooey byproduct will probably interfere too much with the shave. It's better to rely on chelating agents in the soap itself. Using boiled water also helps considerably: this filters out the 'permanent' hardness of water, leaving the 'temporary' hardness. Finally, don't forget that classical triple milled soaps usually simply require more attention than the glycerin-based counterparts, so perhaps what you see is not so much a hardness problem but a dfferent usage problem. Nevertheless I hope you found the above useful.

Good luck!

 

[mdevine]

Outstanding explanation. I feel like I'm back in my college biochemistry class (but unfortunately without the hot blond in the front of the class).

 

[miamimoe]

Thank you for an excellent explanation; I really appreciate it, and now I know what to look for the next time I go to purchase a soap. The members of B&B are truly outstanding!

 

[Groat]

I've been finding with my X2L that it can make a soap lather quite well, but it doesn't transfer to the face with a real degree of success. The lather, once on my face, is pretty thin. I have a feeling that this is partially due to my inexperience, but I also lay part of the blame on the brush.

 

[filedog]

WOW, thanks for taking the time to write that! Now I finally understand what's going on
I did some more reading, what I found said that boiling reduced TEMPORARY hardness...

 

[filedog]

The issue is not with water temperature, but with the hardness. VDH and SCS are rich in what a chemist would refer to as non-ionic surfactants, meaning substances which lower the surface tension of (in this case) water without the use of ions.

That still doesn't say an awful lot, so here it is in even more understandable language: the soap you use in shaving soap is the crucial component to make lather. Without it, air cannot remain trapped in a body of water in any appreciable amounts. The major troublemaker here is the water surface, which has a strong tendency to pull itself together to form as small a surface as possible. With lots of air bubbles the surface area quickly takes on surprisingly high values, and water simply cannot sustain this area without outside help. A soap or surfactant 'hides' the surface of the water from itself, thus allowing water to curve around bubbles, and thus forming lather. Surfactants come in various shapes and sizes, and the important distinction here is either with a charged end—think of a sewing pin—or without one.

The problem is that water hardness, charged particles themselves, locks onto charged ends, forming a gooey substance in the process which is incapable of acting as an intermediary between air bubble and main water body. In other words: kiss a good lather goodbye. With a surfactant/soap without such charged ends, the hardness cannot take out the soap from the lather, thus allowing the surfactant to continue with its work, and hey presto, lather.

If you are looking for a triple milled soap based on fatty acid surfactants (recognisable by a long list of ... tallowate, ... palmate, ... palm kernelate, ... cocoate or coconut acid, ... stearate or stearic acid, myristic acid, lauric acid, and various others) you should also look for so-called chelating agents. These compounds have a serious crush on the charged particles water hardness, and once they capture a hardness particle they will not relinquish their prey. The result is that the water is made softer in situ, although they of course cannot prevent all hardness in water from bonding with a soap molecule. It's basically a race who gets at the hardness first: many chelating agents win, others lose. Whether or not they present in sufficient amounts to deal with your water is a matter of experimenting. You want to look for tetrasodium EDTA and tetrasodium etidronate in the ingredient lists.

Alternatively, you could really load up on soaps. The soap itself then acts as the chelating agent, but if there is too much hardness the gooey byproduct will probably interfere too much with the shave. It's better to rely on chelating agents in the soap itself. Using boiled water also helps considerably: this filters out the 'permanent' hardness of water, leaving the 'temporary' hardness. Finally, don't forget that classical triple milled soaps usually simply require more attention than the glycerin-based counterparts, so perhaps what you see is not so much a hardness problem but a dfferent usage problem. Nevertheless I hope you found the above useful.

Good luck!

This is WIKI material

 

[cymric]

WOW, thanks for taking the time to write that! Now I finally understand what's going on
I did some more reading, what I found said that boiling reduced TEMPORARY hardness...

Yeah, you're right. I always get those two mixed up. It's an embarrassing error to make for someone with a chemical background, but there you have it .

 

[filedog]

Yeah, you're right. I always get those two mixed up. It's an embarrassing error to make for someone with a chemical background, but there you have it .

No problem, just a minor correction. This NEEDS to be in the wiki.....it's the best explanation of why soaps won't lather correctly, that I've seen so far. I think it takes the "mythical" aspect of lather problems, and makes them simple to understand. Thanks again!