Here a post about the Liquid Chalk and generally about Chalk!

Introduction

After I found that I have pretty sweaty hands I started to search different ways to bypass this bad effect. While searching I got stuck into so called liquid chalk. A friend of mine told me he knows how some people are preparing it for themselves, but never tried himself. Although it seemed to be too easy to be true, I gave it a try and it worked out!

Tutorial

So yes - it is that easy:

1. Put colophony in spirit!
* normal colophony you use for soldering (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colophony , shop.ebay.de/?_from=R40&_trksid=p3984.m38.l1311&_nkw=Kolophonium&_sacat=See-All-Categories)
* 99% spirit (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol , just bought that one cgi.ebay.de/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=160405503294&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT)

Here I was asked, how much colophony you'll need. I've never saw it precise, but I took a photo with the ingredients and you can see by yourself approximately how much. And usually I fill about 2/3 of the bottle with spirit, but in the beginning it would be better to put a little less to be able to "work" (to shake good, to see your own recipe, to refill if you put too much chalk).


The ingredients: Spirit, Fine Chalk, Colophony and all bottle to put all in :)


2. Put fine chalk until you are satisfied!
* fine chalk with no corns (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnesium_carbonate, I use cgi.ebay.de/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=400097830021&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT)

3. The bonus step I intended to hide in the video just because I was curios if someone is interested, was to put the tube into a really warm water to let it all melt perfectly together. It doesn't bring that much, but it's a good tuning so it's worth mentioning :)

4. You may put some aroma if you like!

This is my short liquid chalk "tutorial" based on the short clip I made couple of years ago with my phone while making the liquid chalk before start bouldering.

So try to make yourself liquid chalk! Already 1500 people watched my video in vimeo, which makes me think that the people are interested in it!

On the flow

You may think of the "fair climbing industry", which is selling this product for ~10 EUR for 100ml. For my "recipe" you'll need a 2 minutes making time plus couple of minutes "ebaying" - all for a price of ~0.5 EUR for 100ml!

So this opens also the question about the normal chalk and its variations:

"Is it worth of it to buy the hyper super mega ultra chalk?"

And my answer is - "NO!" :)

This is just one of the simple tricks to sell you something basic for much more money :) (the chalk I buy costs 22 EUR for 2.5 kilo and some random hyper super mega ultra chalk costs around 20 EUR for 425 grams (~22 for half kilo), so yeah 5 times more expensive!) All the industry does it and the "fair green alternative climbing industry" actually makes no exception. The strange is that there idiots to buy this shit and think they'll have better performance by doing so and even further - if such happens, they explain it with the new hyper mega ultra chalk (or whatever accessories) they bought. Surprisingly this happens with all sports and not only sports and climbing is no single case.

"just" chalk

In general there are two types of normal chalk - with or without corns. Of course the size of the corns and the amount of the corns differ between the different chalks. Usually people tend to dislike chalk without any corns. People like to grab something or crush something while they are chalking (or at least they told me that), while personally I like to grab something soft :) Most of the people explain their choice also by the performance difference, and actually there is some little difference. I'll say that the corny chalk is a little better for gym climbing. So indeed when they say "here - check it out it's better", it is really better and it holds a little more, but only indoors. Outside when it's cold and you are about to do some performance stuff with glassy fingers, that corny chalk doesn't stick to the fingers at all, while the powder chalk really find it way and sticks to your skin much better in my opinion.

So make your tests by yourself! Don't let the price or the advertise or other people or opinions (mine included) to make up your mind! For me, as I don't care much about performance in the gym I've chosen the low price powder chalk and I found myself with best performance outdoors!