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Wholly Kaw King of Oud

fhalden

fhalden

"Like BarberDave… I make my own fun”
I got a tub of this today in the mail, and it smells great -- and unlike anything else I've ever smelled. Can someone who has actually smelled an Oud, and this soap, confirm for me that what I'm smelling is Oud? As far as I know, I've never smelled Oud before.

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I haven’t smelled the raw ingredient Oud wood, but I know that doesn’t smell like any other Oud based product I’ve smelled.
 
Your best source would probably be @Dragonsbeard because he has experience working with Oud resin. I have King of Oud too and love the scent, but if I am not mistaken I believe WK used a synthetic Oud oil.
 
I also have the WK King of Oud and it’s a very pleasant scent but definitely a synthetic Oud which is not a bad thing but when you smell different authentic Agarwood oil and Oud resins they smell very different. Just like Sandalwood or other ultra expensive aroma ingredients so when paying $50 or less for a jar of shave soap it’s highly unlikely that it’s real Oud/ Agarwood being used unless it’s a very small part of a complex scent.

Just an example I just costed out East Indian Sandalwood oil which is not as expensive as Oud but still very expensive and to make 100 7 oz jars using nothing but pure East Indian Sandalwood oil at 6% which is a normal percentage ( that’s assuming there’s very little burn off which until I tested it I don’t know ) I’d need 42 oz of the East Indian Sandalwood Oil for the 100 jar batch. The cost for the 42 oz is approximately $5,000! That’s $50 a tub just for the Sandalwood oil. Still got all the other ingredients, the Jar, lid, labels, labor, shipping boxes and marketing material costs plus the normal keystone mark up.

Just for laughs a 10 ml bottle of Laos Agarwood oil is $286 which is considered one of the best. Do the math. So rounding it off there are 30 ml in an oz so that’s $858 an oz. times 42 oz would be $36,000!l. Of course if you were buying 42 oz they’d cut you a deal on the price. Lol

Realistically when using real Agarwood oil or as some call it Oud oil. It’s very powerful scent wise and can be diluted in a carrier oil at about 10% . Oud Resin is super powerful and only drops are needed.

So just my experience with Agarwood oil and Oud resin.

Sorry for the long rant guys but fragrance is another of my hobbies like wet shaving as well as I use it in my work I’m pretty passionate about it.
 
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As mentioned multiple times, there's almost zero chance it's real oud, which isn't bad, wrong or deceptive, the vast majority of fragrances with oud in the name use synthetic oud, even the high tier ones.

The interpretation of oud can really vary. I haven't smelled the WK soap, but in shaving it's often an oily smell, like being in an auto shop. It can even vary there, from more like tire rubber to gasoline.

In the fragrance world, it can take on what people politely refer to as a barnyardy smell.
 
Thanks for the info! I like the way King of Oud smells, which is what matters I guess. I'd just be interested in smelling the real deal at some point. Although I must admit "barnyardy" has me a little nervous!

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fhalden said:
Thanks for the info! I like the way King of Oud smells, which is what matters I guess. I'd just be interested in smelling the real deal at some point. Although I must admit "barnyardy" has me a little nervous!

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There are many different varieties and I've smelled more than few over the years so I'd say it depends on where it comes from. I should do a smell pass around! :LOL:
 
Spider said:
I think a lot of folks here would love to be able to smell the single notes by themselves. when blended into a frag, it's hard to say what part comes from a particular note, unless we know what that note smells like by itself.
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I said that as a joke but you bring up a good point! There are many fascists to our hobby and scent is actually a big part of the hobby that maybe we don’t actually think or talk about as a group very often in depth. Maybe a pass around of single notes would give folks a chance to take olfactory notes and put them in their memory banks so that they can recognize the notes within a Shave soap or aftershave, cologne or any aroma blend. I mean we pass around razors right.
The only problem I can see is there are many variations with some aromatics. Example Lavender. I have about 10 or 12 different natural and organic Lavender Oils from places like France, Bulgaria, Spain and Italy to name a few an although you’d know that everyone of them is Lavender when smelling them they each have their own unique differences. As you train your nose you actually begin to be able to separate one from the other. One mayy be a little or a lot more Camphorous than another. One may be sweeter than all the rest while another may be more herbaceous than all the rest. . So it does take time and practice to pick out the little nuances between them. Same can be said for Sandalwood and Oud or Rose Absolute etc.
Synthetics are a whole other world. Again taking Lavender as an example. Their are literally 100’s of difference takes on real Lavender. From very far from smelling like the real thing to very close to the real deal but to a trained nose you can always pick out the chemicals that are commonly used in synthetic scents. Also a there’s a big difference between candle fragrance oils and high quality synthetics done by professional fragrance houses where trained perfumers have years of experience and many have gone to school for Aroma Chemistry. In fact there are many high quality Aroma Chemicals that are partially natural an can also be very expensive. These are usually found in high priced perfumes and colognes. Candle and soap fragrances are very inexpensive and are the most commonly used scents.

if I did a pass around I’d stick with simple natural scents that some are not familiar with like real high quality Lavender, Oud, Sandalwood for example. I mean all you need is a drop or two of any of these scents.
 
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So @Dragonsbeard I've been contemplating getting some essential oils that are used for aromatherapy to give my olfactory glands a work out. Would this at all be feasible. I would think they would be "watered down" but throwing it out there...
 
1savvyRogue said:
So @Dragonsbeard I've been contemplating getting some essential oils that are used for aromatherapy to give my olfactory glands a work out. Would this at all be feasible. I would think they would be "watered down" but throwing it out there...
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i can direct you to a site where you can get very tiny samples of Essential oils from very common ones to some pretty exotic EO’s
They don’t have everything like Mysore Sandalwood or even East Indian but they have samples of some very expensive Aroma ingredients like Rose Absolute and Tonka Bean etc that you can sometimes order in 1 ml samples so they won’t break the bank. if your just looking to learn about them. Pm me and I’ll give you the site as I’m not sure if we are allowed to post links to sites.
 
I've also got the WK King of Oud, in fact I picked it up yesterday and had a smell of it, nice.
I guess I'll run into the same problem is a lot of fellows when I read a sent note, several I have no clue about and I've actually googled which is a small help. I kind of figured, try to start with the basics and grow from there, interesting .
 
As @Dragonsbeard noted, one of the tricky things with notes, is there is a lot of difference between them. Even something basic like lavender can have a wide range.

Add to that how accords work, which is where scents blend together to form a very different scent, similar to how mixing blue and yellow give you green.

And finally, this holds true in perfumery at least, the notes are not the same as the actual ingredients, which aren't generally listed. So a fragrance might list a note, but there isn't any of it actually in the fragrance, it can just smell like it is.

After a while, I've found that I just use note pyramids to get a real rough idea of where the fragrance is going, but never expect it to smell like I think it will based on the pyramid.

It's like music, you can like rock, or jazz etc, but that doesn't mean every rock album is the same, every band has it's own take on rock.
 
I just traded my tub of WK King of Oud. For me the scent was very pleasant, but more of a lot of other stuff being dominant and less oud. Also, the scent was strong in the tub, but once lathered, it ended up very weak. I was not impressed with it.
 
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