Has anyone tried.....

SoapAlchemist

SoapAlchemist

Messages
3,292
adding a smidgeon of bath salts to their shaving water? I'm thinking particularly of people with very hard water, which is the case in much of Britain. As it soften's the water, it seems to me that it would be a good idea for soaking the brush and any additional water added during lather building. They're hard to find nowadays, but I did come across some in Wilkinsons a while ago. I do have some jars that I made, not listed on the website as I'm not 100% confident that they are holding their scent as well as they should. But then unscented would be good, unless it was the same scent as the soap you're using.
So just thought I'ld throw the idea out there. I don't suppose you would need more than 1/4 teaspoon to achieve the desired effect; which should be much easier lather production. But it depends on what your set up is I suppose. Do you fill the sink with water? I'ld be interested to hear if anyone has tried this or does proceed to try this.
 
I hav'nt tried it. I nuke distilled water in a mug & soak the brush in that. It has improved the lather somewhat.

SWMBO has a tub of dead sea bath salts, would that have an even better effect, or would it end up like a union carbide disaster?
 
From what I have gleaned, Dead Sea salt has a lot of minerals in it which would inhibet lather, as opposed to ordinary sea salt. Henk!!!!!
 
Both 'ordinary' salts and dead sea salts are primarily sodium chloride (kitchen salt - rock salt (funny aside: the bunch of crap translators working for the Dutch branch of Discovery and the likes know nothing about idiom, certainly not science idiom, and apparently have no good dictionaries either (plus looking something up in a dictionary is counterproductive for such translators -- too much time involved, as they are on a per word pay basis), so you see things like 'rotszout' which is a literal translation of rock salt, but has no meaning in Dutch. Even the better paid translators for national TV lack certain idiom -- e.g. they always translate 'statutory rape' in US series with 'verkrachting' (=rape), even though statutory rape in almost all cases is not rape, but consensual sex with a minor, which in the US system has been legally equated with rape), anyhow, as I said, both salts are primarily sodium chloride and will affect lather identically. Salt will kill lather over certain concentrations, as it will influence the solubility of soaps in water, as well as the surface tension effect of anionic surfactants ('soaps').

Dead sea salt contains unusually high concentrations of bromine (sodium bromide), but other than that is fairly normal sea salt. The concentrations of bromine are high enough to warrant extraction of bromine from Dead sea water, but as percentage in the salt, it is negligible.

Hard water contains minerals like calcium and magnesium salts, which are much more deleterious to lather than normal salt, since they actually convert your soap into an insoluble salt, with no residual surfactant activity.

On the other hand, insoluble soap salts make for excellent lubricants. Some high performance lubes are based on lithium soaps.
 
Hmmm, I have a marine fish tank and use a reverse osmosis unit to purify the water I use for that. It takes out something like 94% of the impurities so perhaps I should try lathering with some!
 
What's in the 6% it leaves behind? If it's fish jobby (tradename "fishit") you're a braver man than I am even trying it :D

Is the 94% removal additive? ie. send it through once, leave 6% behind, through again and it leaves 0.36% (6% of 6%)... or does it only remove 94% of types of stuff?

Enquiring minds need to know.
 
It strips 94ish % of the particles within of tap water. Most of that will be calcium salts, chlorine, nitrates, phosphates, heavy metals etc etc. If you ask your water provider for an analysis of your tap water they must by law provide one and you'd be surprised what's in there albeit at trace levels. Generally, amongst other things, you'll find trace levels of arsenic and effluent in most tap water but not a sufficiently high levels to have an effect on the human body. What I find interesting is if you believe in homoeopathy uses ultra diluted chemicals then if that has an effect then the trace elements in water must also have one!

The way reverse osmosis works that tap water passes 1st through a carbon filter to get rid of the chlorine then a kind of large particle filter before a percentage of water is forced through a membrane, due to the mains pressure, which only allows water molecule sized particles through, so it acts as a sieve if you like. The cleaned water goes to a container while the other water, which now has a high concentration of "bits" is flushed away.

Anyway I strip the tap water of virtually all its contaminants then use a synthetic sea salt mix to add in the salts and elements I actually want or just use the purified water to top up the evaporated water.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom