Gonna scotchguard tonight. Ribbon too or take it off?
I agree, I wont wear my nice hats in the rain or snow, but will use this black wool one. It is a bit warmer than the fur felt initially but boy, I really can feel the difference when I doff my fedora and the wind rushes across my scalp. I feel about 10 degrees warmer with a hat on. When I wear a hat, many times I can go without a coat, but if I forget the hat, and I forget the coat, whoa nelly
Beavers live & work hard in water.
Wool gets stinky when wet.
I left the bands on one has a cloth band, the other a leather band and it didn't seem to bother either.
Hi, just been reading this thread and this caught my attention - just how common were wool fedoras, etc, back in the day? Were they quite frequently worn by those on a lower budget? I look at a lot of photos on the internet from the 30s-50s and to be honest I'm not sure I would be able to tell the difference between a fur felt and a wool felt (tbh they all look like fur to me - maybe they are?).Originally Posted by tonyb
Thanks.
Personally, I don't think anybody can tell fur felt from wool looking at period photos of 60 to 80 years ago. I also don't think any wool lids from back then worn regularly would still be around. The answer to your question lies in what collection of NOS hats have been found & how many examples of pristine wool felt hats were identified. I have never seen many posted but have seen numerous nice fur felt models. It only goes to reason that if wool hats were commonly available, they'd be being found as much as pristine fur felt ones are in attics, old store inventory, etc.
Deputy Swoopy, Crease Police - Mounted Division, Fedora Bureau of Investigation - Icon Defender
I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted, and I won't be laid a hand on. I don't do these to other people and I require the same from them.
WAR = What is it good for?
They were much more common in Europe. I posted a German one back in this thread (see below). It had heavy wear and is still in good condition after ~ 100 years.
Last edited by mayserwegener; 01-04-2013 at 12:49 PM.
From a distance, I dont know that you see much difference. However, the tactile sensation is not as great with the wool as it is with my Buckaroo Hatters custom I just got. My wool Bailey Yates fedora in all black is nice for a change of pace and I scotchguarded it for rain (it is litefelt and says water repellant in the top liner) but you have a better appreciation for the aesthetics of the wool. I know it tends to hold onto lint and dog hair a lot more than my rabbit felt ones. I dont know that it wont last a long time and black is a color that I wont wear but in dark winter and probably when I am bumming around, because I am digging my grey dress Stetson and this silverbelly Buckaroo colors that much more.
The hat I posted above does not have the feel of a modern wool hat. It's very dense / soft but doesn't have the pliabilty (does not hand crease but is not stiff) of fur felt. I have come across many German and Austrian hat industry articles from the early 1900s discussing the use of wool.
Also as mentioned back in this thread wool Bowlers (Melone) were common in Germany and Austria. I have few examples that are ~ 100 years old and are in good condition (see below). I think the characteristics work better for stiff felt hats but they are major lint collectors.
Great finish (see lint) and weighs only 4 ounces.
Last edited by mayserwegener; 01-04-2013 at 12:50 PM.
^^^^^
That's gotta be right, on all accounts.
Wool felt hats (the new ones, anyway) look good from a few feet away, and in photographs.
I'd wager that we've all seen more vintage magazine and newspaper advertisements for wool felt "dress" hats than the hats themselves. Their rarity in the antique malls and online outlets, and their almost complete absence in those caches of NOS vintage hats, would lead a reasonable person to suppose they weren't particularly common (relatively) even back when hats in general were much more commonly worn.
Vintage wool felt Westerns, on the other hand, turn up every now and then. More of them were made, I suspect. And perhaps more of them just got put away and forgotten, until the attic got cleared out, decades upon decades later. You know, guy gets a cowboy hat from his co-workers or his grown children or whoever, wears it for an hour or two to humor the gift-givers, and then tells the missus he'd sooner wear a tutu in the Fourth of July parade than ever again be seen in public in that hat, but don't throw it out, because if the kids or the guys at the plant of whoever should ask about it, he can honestly say he still has it, and dishonestly say he wears it every now and then.
Last edited by tonyb; 01-06-2013 at 10:13 AM.
My first hat was a wool felt (some Peruvian hat on which I put a grossgrain ribbon)... it was scratchy and rigid like hell. *shudder*
As an everyday "beater" for rain and snow I take the Akubra Fed III (standard quality), which though fur felt is considerably more "rough" than the fur felt vintage Mayser or Borso.
@Mayserwegener
These European black wools you posted are quite nice. Wool certainly works better with Derbies/Bowlers, or any other hat that requires considerable stiffness (i.e. Western hats).
However soft hats made of wool... it's here where the drawbacks of wool vs. fur become apparent, although without a doubt the wool felts back then were a different league than today anyway.
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