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Klar Kabinett vs Dusy (professional) Kabinett

I’ve been wet shaving with a brush and soap for 2 years now, so I feel that I’ve read a few things about like of TOBS, DRH, GFT, Tabac, MWF, Palmolive, Cella etc. Wonderful soaps, not to turn your nose up to. However, of recent I’ve been trawling the Internet looking in the not so frequented pages of the web, looking through thousands of results when you search for “shaving soap” on sites like Etsy and eBay.

The other month I found something that looked and sounded familiar… One of my favourite soaps is Klar Kabinet and while I have some in stock, it was always a shame that there wasn’t a ready supply to recommend to others, so when I made my discovery I was pretty intrigued.

Dutsy kabinett is sold by a German hair salon wholesalers-style website XXL Friseurmarkt, and they have an eBay page that stocks this soap. Its not justthe name that is similar, the weight that the soap is sold in is also identical (500g) as is the shape. In the end I decided to take the plunge and ordered up half a kilo of this stuff to give it a whirl.

The soap arrived quickly (2 days) and after opening the delivery packaging the similarities of these soaps continued. The paper wrapping felt the same with a gloss finish on one side and the wrapping style was also the same between the KK and DK soaps. Once the soap wrapping was undone inside there lay two bricks of sweet rose scented soap. To my (untrained) nose these soaps are identical.

I’ve pictured a brick of my KK and a brick of the new DK together below:


$Which is which.jpg


The ingredient lists of the two soaps is different, however I hope that since we have a great pool of knowledge at B&B, maybe someone else can make some input on this and explain what significance these differences might have??? (DK on the black paper, KK on the white paper)


$DSCN4231.jpg$DSCN4232.jpg


On to the testing; each soap was freshly grated into an Ikea tin and presoaked for 5 minutes with some warm water sat on the top.

I used 3 types of brush:
A boar, Omega 11137
2-band badger, Semogue BC Texugo
Ultra soft silver tip, Thater 4125/2 3-band

Hopefully giving a good range of offerings to really try and weasel out any differences between these soaps.

Using my brushes I shook out a bit of the water and I loaded for 10 seconds before adding some water to the lather that was developing. After another 10 seconds building lather/loading I went to town palm lathering and the lather was ready about another minute later.

Both soaps loaded with ease, both were easy to find the water balance point and produced plenty of lather. The lather felt like it had body and cushion. The slip feel when I rubbed my fingers together was impressive and identical for both. The only difference that I could find… and this is really being picky, is that maybe the DK produced slightly more volume of lather, this of course could be just my mistaken perception?

I ended up shaving with my Merkur 37C using Omega 11137 to build the lather and back-to-back both soaps produced an excellent shave. No nicks, no burn, total protection, fantastic glide, all wrapped up in a sweet rose lathery mess. A+ for both soaps for post shave skin feel, two outstanding shaves.

Coming down to the crunch, is DK the same soap as KK? If I hadn’t seen the ingredients list, then I would say YES.

If the ingredients list means that these are totally different soaps, am I upset that there is no more KK? Nope, so long as I can still buy Dusy Kabinett, I’m happy.

eBay Page

Web Page

At 0.04 Euros (4 cents) per gram, this beats the price of a refill puck of TOBS, GFT, DRH & Tabac.
 
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If it is made using the Marseilles process, similar to martin de candre, the internet tells me that you can sub palm for coconut without any change to the soap except for color. Note: I am not at all educated on soap, I just happened to be reading up on the Marseilles process yesterday.
 
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If you look at the latter ingredients, which make up the fragrance portion of the ingredient list, they are identical so at the minimum the same fragrance oils were used in both soaps. If it is made by the same company it is interesting that they switched from coconut oil to palm oil as many other companies are doing the opposite in response to the bad publicity that palm tree plantations have received in the last few years. From your nice lather pics it looks like a high quality shaving soap, unfortunately I wasn't a big fan of the original Klar or most rose scents in general. Thanks for the wonderful contribution.
 
Fantastic detective work! I've never tried Klar Kabinet. I have an unopened tin of Klar Classic that I've been saving; if i end up liking it, I may just have to seek out the DK.
 
Soap hobbyist here.

These are two, different, soap recipes.

The KK is using the following recipe:

Coconut Oil
Stearic Acid


The DK is using:


Palm Oil
Stearic Acid
Palm Kernel Oil
Glycerin

As someone mentioned above, companies are moving away from Palm Oil. It would be interesting to look at an old block of KK to see if it has the same recipe as the DK. It is possible that KK and DK were the same recipe from the same factory in the past and your supplier simply has old stock of the DK because the KK is more popular.

Nice to know they have similar lathering qualities.


-Jeremy
 
...It would be interesting to look at an old block of KK to see if it has the same recipe as the DK. It is possible that KK and DK were the same recipe from the same factory in the past and your supplier simply has old stock of the DK because the KK is more popular.

Nice to know they have similar lathering qualities.


-Jeremy

Hi Jeremy, you might be correct. I believe the price of the DK now, is not in-line with the price that KK was offered when in production some years ago. Maybe they have priced the DK as limited availabaility old stock, and is infact an older recipe? I'll check the packaging for anymore clues.

Thanks
 
That Dusy is definitely not old stock as it has the individual fragrance components and has the use within 9 months of opening symbol on the packaging, both of which were introduced within the last few years.
 
bumping this old thread just to say that I have some packages of the Dusy coming which I will be happy to review.

Sadly, I did not have the presence of mind to order KK when available, but I can offer thoughts on this soap when I get it. I ordered enough so that the shipping was reasonable, and overall it probably came out the the price of any of my other low-to-midbpriced soaps, even with shipping. If I like it, I will have plenty, and if I don't, my friends and relatives will have a bottomless mug of shaving soap to mooch!
 
Pardon my ignorance of palm farming, but since coconuts come from palms, how ethically different are the growing and harvesting processes?
 
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