Restore pliability to that vintage straw hat

[rogerstg]

From a recent 3 for $35 EBay win, I've been messing with a vintage Dobbs coconut palm hat. The hat was delivered with cracks in the crown and brim, which I was able to fix with Pliobond. I discarded the badly faded puggaree and restored the shape with some steam.

During the steaming, I noticed that the hat became pleasantly pliable. That pliability disappeared when the hat dried, resulting in another crack in the brim when I replaced the sweat band.:eeek:

I fixed the new crack, but figured there was no future in having a hat that cracked every time it bent a bit, so I started thinking about ways to restore oils to the hat without resulting in an oily mess.

I mixed some vegetable oil with denatured alcohol in the proportion of ~ 1:3 and put it in a spray bottle. Then I lightly, very lightly, misted the hat, inside and out with the mixture (hat band off, of course).

The next day I had a wonderfully pliable, but not oily hat. It darkened only slightly, more closely matching the color of Pliobond (thank goodness).



I thought I'd share this with you because I didn't find anything about this technique in my prior searches.

Roger

 

[hatsRme]

Thanks, Rog! The only other reference I can recall is Art Fawcett's suggestion of taking your straws into the bathroom when showering, to absorb the steam. But nothing about buttering up the straw... Good thinking, sir!

 

[fabiovenhorst]

Very interesting... thanks for sharing...

 

[TheDane]

There are already some threads on this - ie: New Panama help thread.

I never use TFL's own search engine. Instead I use a site specific Google search with a string, something like: "restore panama hat site:thefedoralounge.com" (without the quotes). Works a lot better

 

[hatsRme]

You are the man, Ole! What film do you use?

 

[RJR]

Very helpful.

 

[rogerstg]

There are already some threads on this - ie: New Panama help thread.

I'd read those, but didn't see anything about restoring the oils to the fibers. The initial procedure using steam to restore the shape, I learned from that thread.

The problem is that the suppleness only lasted a few hours, until it dried. I know that restoring oil is important to preserving old wood, so I needed to figure a way to introduce a little bit of oil, evenly, to this 50+ year old material.

After a couple of days, the hat has stayed soft and pliable, better than with steam alone.

 

[Rick Blaine]

BRILLIANT!:eusa_clap

 

[TheDane]

You are the man, Ole! What film do you use?

Film Noir, Charlie. Memories about anything prior to the morning shave often seem to be hiding in the shadow

 

[hatsRme]

Still impressive. Some days it's hard to remember to shave!