Gobi
One of the Regulars
- Messages
- 169
Well I ruined my first felt today. I wanted to push the pouncing to see what would happen and to find out how far was too far. The good news is that I pounced a fairly thick and stiff Winchester beaver felt to a wonderfully soft finish....a wonderful hand. The bad news is the dye is so very mottled. I am thinking that I have some natural indigo dye laying around and I will re dye this and see what I get. It was a noble experiment....I just wish it had a better result. Pics are not great. View attachment 270325 View attachment 270326
That's too bad. I'm curious to see the outcome of dying. Sometimes it's fun to experiment and at the end of the day we learn something so not all is bad.
I once pounced the crap out of a stetson western. It was a nice whiskey color and the felt was fairly thin to begin with but I still nearly halved the thickness. I was totally new to felt hats and I was just trying to make it like the hats I saw on old westerns. Hindsight, it was pretty darn close to begin with! Anyway after hours of pouncing by hand, the color never mottled at all. I have no idea the fur quality but it was pretty nice. It was a John Deere Stetson and way better than other John Deere Stetsons I've owned since then. After all that pouncing the color was the same as when I started only the felt was thinner and it had a really nice hand. It still held up to the elements very well. That was one of the first felts I ever owned and i just assumed that all Stetson hats would be that good. I soon found out how terrible some of them could be.