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FELT COWBOY HAT CARE
 Felt
is a dense collection of short, single animal fibers pressed
together with hot water and steam so that they interlock. Felt is a
fabric, but it is much stronger than woven fabrics because with felt
each individual fiber is interlocked with other fibers in several
different directions.
Felt makes a superior fabric for a cowboy hat
because it is light, smooth, much harder to tear or damage than
other fabrics, and is naturally water resistant. Below are some tips
to help you keep your felt cowboy hat looking and wearing its best.
1) Don't set your felt cowboy hat down on its
brim. Setting your hat down on its brim could cause the brim to
flatten and lose its shape.
Instead of setting your hat down on its brim, turn it upside-down
and set it down on the top of its crown.
2) Put your hat up at night by placing it on
a hat rack or in a cowboy hat box.
3) Don't take your hat on and off your head
by handling the crown. Use the front and/or back of the brim
instead. To help your brim hold its shape, handle the brim as close
to the crown as you can.
4) Too much heat might be damaging to your
hat, so don't leave it anywhere it can get too hot like in an
enclosed vehicle or near a heater or stove. Heat combined with
humidity can be especially bad for your felt cowboy hat.
5) When cleaning your hat, dust it off with a
hat brush, a sponge, or a clean damp cloth when the hat is dry, not
wet. Begin dusting on the front left side of your hat and work your
way around the hat in a counterclockwise direction. Persistent lint
or stray hairs can be removed by patting your hat with the sticky
side of masking (or similar) tape.
6) If you have removed your hat when either
the sweatband or the entire hat was damp or wet (from sweat, rain,
snow, or whatever), turn the sweatband up until dry. This will help
allow sweat, water, and/or hair care products to evaporate instead
of soaking into your hat. Let a wet sweatband and/or the entire hat
air dry naturally. Do not use heat to speed up the drying process.
If you're superstitious, do not put your hat
on your bed. It won't hurt the hat or the bed, but a hat on a bed is
considered to be bad luck.
Felt Cowboy Hats - Did You
Know?
~Felt hats are made of wool felt or fur felt.
~Wool felt hats are usually less expensive
than fur felt hats.
~Fur felt hats are more expensive but provide
better rain protection, last longer, and keep their shape better.
~Fur felt hats are most commonly made from
rabbit fur. The more expensive fur felt hats are commonly made of
beaver. Other furs are also used to make hats and it is not uncommon
to mix different kinds of fur.
~Xs are the measurement of quality for a felt
cowboy hat. The more Xs, the higher the quality. Years ago the
number of Xs stood for the amount of beaver used to make a hat (more
Xs meant that more beaver fur was used) but this old standard is no
longer true. Today, each hat maker uses Xs as a relative rating of
quality for their own line of hats, both felt and straw, but there
is not an industry wide standard rating system. For example, one hat
maker may make a hat they rate as a 3X but this does not indicate
that there is or isn't any beaver fur in the hat, and the hat may be
of greater or lesser quality than another hat maker's 3X hat.
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