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OT Anyone know who makes an absorbent bath towel?

Ray Behner

Ray Behner

Diamond
Joined
Mar 27, 2009
Location
Brunswick Oh USA
My wife buys some pricey bath towels from JC Penney. She washed them and put them in the closet. I grabbed one and tried to dry off after a shower. It's like trying to dry off with a piece of Saran Wrap. What bullshit! These are 100% cotton. They've now been washed 6/7 times. Still the same. Any suggestions?
 
Same thing here. Were they made in China? Ours say 100% cotton but as you say seem more like plastic.

I'm wondering if they are cotton but had the threads impregnated with some "slickum" so they run through machinery better.
 
LockNut got it. Fabric softener is kind of like wax or oil coating. it makes the towels nice and soft/slick but they repel water instead of soaking it up.
Bill D
 
Ray Behner said:
My wife buys some pricey bath towels from JC Penney. She washed them and put them in the closet. I grabbed one and tried to dry off after a shower. It's like trying to dry off with a piece of Saran Wrap. What bullshit! These are 100% cotton. They've now been washed 6/7 times. Still the same. Any suggestions?
Click to expand...

Yes, indeed. High-end vendors carry the solution.

Look for "long staple Egyptian cotton". Soft and absorbent, heavy as sin, but comfortable, and last a long time.

If they get 'scratchy' after a long life of washing in hard water, a brief sojourn in Vinegar to take lime deposits off the tips, and they'll serve another round.

Even so, not as durable as the reinforced ones. Toweling is much worse IN China, BTW.

The local products may as well be plastic grocery bags, 'flocked', and might actually HAVE some as recycled content.
 
Definitely the fabric softener sheets, which also forms a gummy mess deep in the lint filter which can screw with your drier and is sometimes not visible without taking things apart.
 
I was surprised to see in India that "towels" were a thin printed cotton fabric. More like what you'd use for a scarf than a terry towel. I thought, "That can't work very well, compared to what WE have." Then I found out the whole philosophy is different. You soak up as much as the cloth will take, shake it out, then soak up some more. And it dries out quickly. So it exposed my ethnocentric towel ideas.
 
TGTool said:
I was surprised to see in India that "towels" were a thin printed cotton fabric. More like what you'd use for a scarf than a terry towel. I thought, "That can't work very well, compared to what WE have." Then I found out the whole philosophy is different. You soak up as much as the cloth will take, shake it out, then soak up some more. And it dries out quickly. So it exposed my ethnocentric towel ideas.
Click to expand...

Hard to even GET enough water to wet it in the first place, many parts of India.

And then.. ambient temperatures are similar to our paint curing ovens as well.
 
Ray Behner said:
My wife buys some pricey bath towels from JC Penney. She washed them and put them in the closet. I grabbed one and tried to dry off after a shower. It's like trying to dry off with a piece of Saran Wrap. What bullshit! These are 100% cotton. They've now been washed 6/7 times. Still the same. Any suggestions?
Click to expand...

What? You bathe? Who'd thunk!;)

Stuart
 
I got SWMBO to stop using dryer sheets on the towels many years ago, so our towels work fine. I sometimes visit a home where softener is used and their towels feel great, but leave you wet.

Larry
 
L Vanice said:
I got SWMBO to stop using dryer sheets on the towels many years ago, so our towels work fine. I sometimes visit a home where softener is used and their towels feel great, but leave you wet.

Larry
Click to expand...

Probably not a surprise, but by using the cheaper softeners and not so much of them, one can have the best of both. PROVIDING, of course, the towels were 100% Cotton, and of at least a medium staple (fiber length). Any poly-wotever will look good, stay that way after more launderings, but fageddaboudit as to easy drying-off.
 
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