Rain : rabbit fur vs beaver fur ?

[guillaumeb]

It's starting to get a bit cold and rainy here in France and I actually feel happy cause I get to wear the Akubra Hampton I bought in Spring.

Now it's been raining A LOT today and my hat was just drenched. Following your advice, I let it rest and it dried up pretty quickly looking all shiny.

But i'm wondering how many showers it can actually stand in the long run. Is there a specific product to use at some point ?

Is there really no problem wearing a hat made of rabbit fur under the rain ? How are beaver-made hats stronger ?

Thanks

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[moontheloon]

they will both be fine in the rain

but the logic I use is .... think about where the animal lives

rabbits live in holes and beavers pretty much live in water

but both should fare just fine in the elements if it is a well made hat

 

[Frunobulax]

^^^^^
What he said. The dangers to the hat, I believe, are tapering of the crown and, of course, ruining the sweat band. A well-made fur felt hat should survive the rain, as long as it's dried correctly (like, not in a hot car). The leather sweat, especially on older hats, can be a concern. One of my wife's hats, a milan, got pretty wet at a festival this year and, though I thought I did everything right when we got home (and the sweat looked OK after it dried), the sweat shrivelled over the next couple of days and I had to replace it.

And from what I understand, Akubras can withstand Nuclear Winter.

 

[nidan48]

My Akubras have been drenched multiple times. Occasionally piled with snow. They did shrink a bit. I believe that they recommend turning out the sweatband and letting the hat dry resting on it. I probably did it a few times. After about 20 years they started to soften up a bit. I spent one afternoon long long ago when they and I were young kicking them all over the house to try and break them in and they wouldn't. They are tough hats that can outlive you without special care. Get a hat jack. Size adjustment is easy when they are soaked.

 

[Frunobulax]

My Akubras have been drenched multiple times. Occasionally piled with snow. They did shrink a bit. I believe that they recommend turning out the sweatband and letting the hat dry resting on it. I probably did it a few times. After about 20 years they started to soften up a bit. I spent one afternoon long long ago when they and I were young kicking them all over the house to try and break them in and they wouldn't. They are tough hats that can outlive you without special care. Get a hat jack. Size adjustment is easy when they are soaked.

Emphasis mine. I have a pretty hilarious visual in my head right now, of you kicking your hat around the house.

 

[Fed in a Fedora]

Since you bought an Akubra, I think that you already have the correct product for wet weather. They are meant to protect you rather than you treating them as museum pieces. Just a bit of care to prevent mould/mildew while drying and the sweat band should be given some leather treatment such as Lexol or similar product to keep it from becoming brittle.

Fed

 

[Short Balding Guy]

Gee; Excellent question. I live adjacent to a lake in Minnesota, USA. Living on a lake, my hats do end up wet. Both rain, snow and occasionally them going into the water. Beaver custom hats and rabbit hats have hit the water. I have even had a hat be in the water long enough for it to sink level to the water surface. My dogs had knocked the hat into the water while I was out in the sailboat. Each occasion, I set the hat in a airy, spot (not in direct sunlight) and let it start to dry. A bit into the process of drying I wipe the leather sweatband with Lexol or other leather conditioners. If the hat crown drys with a distorted crown shape I use a steamer and a form to re-shape the crown. I have done the same to the brim shape, but much less frequently. All of my hats get worn and they come thru well. In fact they surprise me with how durable they really are.

Take it an additional step; They clean up from spills in the dirt easily. They clean up from wood chips that accumulate on the brim and crown when running a chainsaw. They handle getting misshapen bumping into tree limbs. The hats do well shielding my bald head from the glare of the sun. Yes they can show some wear, but for the most part they are tough.

Others have mentioned the Akubra hat models. Yes my experience is that they are incredibly durable to weather. Those hats, not surprisingly, come with a denser felt and a bit stiffer feel to the hand. Not bad or good, just different.

Like most others on the forum, I have more than 1 hat. When one is drying out I can choose a different one. Or when the weather is predicted to be particularly challenging, I can choose an Akubra.

Wear them confidently. Buy many hats.

Best, Eric -

 

[Genuine Classic Gangster]

they will both be fine in the rain

I disagree. In my experience, neither will be fine in the rain, especially if it is heavy rain (although Akubras might be an exception to that, based on the testimonies on this board).

For about 12 years, I wore Biltmore rabbit felt hats during the Winter. Each hat would last for about two seasons, after which point the rain and/or snow damage that it had taken caused it to shrink and to lose its shape so much that the hat became so ugly that I had to discard it and buy a new one (having the shrunken & misshapen hat cleaned and reblocked at my local hat shop did not fix those problems, it only improved upon the hat's appearance marginally).

Eventually I tried a modern Borsalino rabbit felt hat. It looked amazing when I first got it, but before one Winter with it had finished, elements damage had caused it too to become irreparably (at least, by my local hat shop) shrunken and misshapen and it likewise looked terrible.

After that, I became really fed up, and decided only to buy felt hats in beaver henceforth, and to buy from reputable hatters. For the Spring and Summer months, I bought a lightweight beaver felt hat from Optimo Chicago. I now realize that that one somewhat loses its shape (although it still looks decent) after a taking a few rainfalls (Graham openly states that their lightweight felts don't hold their shapes against the elements as well as do their heavier ones). However, Optimo is able to restore it to close to its original state when they clean and reblock it (but of course that is expensive because it costs money for the service and for the shipping both ways [unless one lives near their shop]).

For the Fall and Winter months, I bought a long hair beaver felt hat from Optimo Chicago. After that hat took extremely heavy rainfall, copious amounts of dye began to leak out of it (the missing dye is not apparent from looking at the hat now, but I saw dye coloring fill the drips of water that fell out while the hat was wet, and I set the hat atop paper towels to dry, and they became heavily stained with the hat's dye), and its crown to shrink a little bit (at least, it appears that way to my eyes) and to lose its shape somewhat, and its sweatband to shrink a lot and make the hat too tight, and the dye from the hat to leak through to the liner and stain it too. I haven't yet sent that hat back for servicing since after those issues happened. I presume they can make it look a lot better than it does now and the resolve tightness issue by replacing the sweatband and reblocking the hat. I'm not sure if they will be able to make the crown as big as it originally was (unless my eyes are playing tricks on me and it didn't actually shrink).

In his videos, Graham says that his hats are not "precious" and that the wearer need not worry because they can hold up to rain and snow with no ill effects. Statements like that, and similar ones on this board that (such as are present in this very thread) instilled faith in me that I could wear my dress weight hat from Optimo with impunity, but experience has taught me that I ought not to have done so.

I love Optimo and Graham (I'll definitely still buy hats from them) and I don't think he is lying about what he said or trying to mislead anyone...but I do think perhaps he doesn't realize that extremely heavy rainfalls do have the potential to mess up his hats. I wish he would have put a caveat statement like that into his videos in which he advocates wearing his hats free from worry about the elements, because if he warned me then I would have known to be more careful before my long hair beaver hat from him received rain damage.

In fact, I've made this post in order to warn the OP and others interested in the question in the way that I wish I had been.

Having said that, my Optimo beaver felt hats certainly hold up to rain much better than did my Biltmore rabbit felt hats and my modern Borsalino rabbit felt hat. Despite the elements damage they have taken, my Optimo hats remain good-looking enough to be wearable, whereas my Biltmores and Boraslino did not.

My takeaway lessons from the experiences I've described are:

1. Rabbit fur felt hats (again, except perhaps Akubras and maybe some other specific brand(s)? with which I do not have personal experience) are totally inadequate against rain and/or snow.


2. Even very well-made beaver felt hats are not as invincible to rain and/or snow as some may have one believe, and so anyone wearing a good and/or expensive hat should avoid those elements as much as possible in order to preserve its pristine condition.

 

[tonyb]

Most of us have seen hat crowns taper after repeated exposure to rain. It is the nature of felt to keep on felting, meaning that when the itty-bitty fur fibers get wet they tighten up and the felt gets denser. But this also results in the hat body's dimensions shrinking a bit. In the crown, that means taper.

Stiffer hats are less prone to taper, and higher-quality felts are generally less prone to it. Generally. But I've seen fairly high-quality hats taper and dimple. The good news is that the taper can be corrected by a reblocking. The bad news is that most people don't have a hatter down the street from them, so they have to send the hat out for that service.

 

[tonyb]

To echo GCG, I've had similar experience with Biltmores and Borsalinos. But I've rebuilt 'em good as new. Better, arguably.

There's a school of thought that says there comes a point when felt just won't felt anymore. Some argue that newer felt is "live" and prone to shrinking and old felt is "dead" and stable.

I dunno. I'm willing to bet that if a person were so foolish as to wear his 60-year-old clear beaver Stetson 100 for a long hike in a downpour and then immediately put that hat on the rear window deck of his '67 Coupe de Ville left with the windows up in a parking lot in Fort Worth on a hot August day (it stopped raining, okay?), that hat would taper.

 

[moontheloon]

To echo GCG, I've had similar experience with Biltmores and Borsalinos. But I've rebuilt 'em good as new. Better, arguably.

There's a school of thought that says there comes a point when felt just won't felt anymore. Some argue that newer felt is "live" and prone to shrinking and old felt is "dead" and stable.

I dunno. I'm willing to bet that if a person were so foolish as to wear his 60-year-old clear beaver Stetson 100 for a long hike in a downpour and then immediately put that hat on the rear window deck of his '67 Coupe de Ville left with the windows up in a parking lot in Fort Worth on a hot August day (it stopped raining, okay?), that hat would taper.

do people that foolish exist ?

 

[tonyb]

do people that foolish exist ?

I fear they do. The emergency rooms are full of them.

 

[tonyb]

People get to thinking magically sometimes. While it's generally true that hats were better made 60-plus years ago, the things aren't bulletproof. That nearly good as new '40s vintage hat survives in such a condition because it is essentially new. It was rarely worn, so it naturally shows little sign of wear. Even the finest hats (and automobiles and overcoats and ... ) will show signs of use with use.

I'm not at all surprised by GCG's experience with higher-end hats. We are fortunate these days to have excellent felt body suppliers and a growing community of people who know what to do with them. Count Optimo in Chicago in that number. But repeatedly subject the hat to rough weather and it will show signs of it.

 

[jlee562]

I dunno, the way I read it, the key is "extremely heavy rainfall." If you're going to soak any felt through to the core, repeatedly, expecting that it will show no sign of wear is a false expectation.

 

[alanfgag]

Just carry an umbrella.

 

[theoldnorthwest]

I dunno, the way I read it, the key is "extremely heavy rainfall." If you're going to soak any felt through to the core, repeatedly, expecting that it will show no sign of wear is a false expectation.

My thoughts exactly, if you want something to protect your head in heavy downpours buy an umbrella.

 

[Rogera]

Just carry an umbrella.

The beauty of simplicity.

 

[Bob Roberts]

Most of us have seen hat crowns taper after repeated exposure to rain. It is the nature of felt to keep on felting, meaning that when the itty-bitty fur fibers get wet they tighten up and the felt gets denser. But this also results in the hat body's dimensions shrinking a bit. In the crown, that means taper.

Stiffer hats are less prone to taper, and higher-quality felts are generally less prone to it. Generally. But I've seen fairly high-quality hats taper and dimple. The good news is that the taper can be corrected by a reblocking. The bad news is that most people don't have a hatter down the street from them, so they have to send the hat out for that service.

TRUE. That happen with my Camp Draft.

 

[ingineer]

Buy the umbrella as Alan says. Should be bon sens
My Favorite
https://www.senz.com/en/stick-umbrellas/senz-original/
even this guy knows

 

[Andykev]

My experience with a "rabbit" fur hat is that it will shrink and the crown will taper. Quite badly. Beaver has not. It depends on how wet. My "rabbit" fur hat came from a well know Chicago hatter. I wore it years ago during an absoulute deluge. Heavy rain which was cascading over the rain gutters, so up on the roof went I to clear the gutters. I properly dried the hat by shaping and folding out the sweatband, but that did not keep the crown from shrinking.
This "soaked" had was wet thru the liner. Swimming would not have wet it more.

The hat needed to be reblocked, which required sending it out for removal of sweat, liner, etc.

I believe this particular hat (an early model) was a fine hat, but it was not "fully felted". In that, I meant the hat maker now has a new process which I hear tightens up the felt the first time. Unsure if this is 100% true.
But, felt, old felt, like my vintage hats, DO NOT taper. They are "aged" and pretty darn tight.

So if you wear your hat running from the store to the car, or get caught out walking the dog...not to worry. That is what it's for. However, in MY case, I was out for a couple hours in pouring soaking heavy rain. I would of should have worn something else, or a plastic rain cover. It was an "emergency" and I didn't think.

Western hats in my view do not suffer the same, as they have a ton of stiffner in them. I wore a "Stratton" trooper hat in the rain, and it was like a hunk of wax cardboard in the rain. But made for that purpose.