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:
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)
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.
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:
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)
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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