Making a felt hat

How is a felt hat made?

Felt hats take 7 weeks to make, even in large factories, because the design of a hat of this type is purely artisanal.

What's the difference between felt and other fabrics?

Many people misunderstand felt: they think it's a fabric like any other. They're wrong: fabric and felt require absolutely different manufacturing processes.

The manufacture of a felt hat differs from all other fabrics in that it requires a myriad of short animal fibers, difficult to work with because of their natural tendencies to "crawl" and because of their ability to twist when handled in hot water or steam. Felt is known as a strong fabric because its fibers are bonded in all directions with other fibers. Other fabrics are made of fibers, twisted into threads and woven by hand or machine. As they are woven either at an angle or in parallel lines, they are vulnerable to tearing along the lines.

What is felt made of?

Felt hats can be made from wool felt (inexpensive) or hair felt (medium to high price, depending on the hair). Rabbit fur is used in the majority of fur hats. Hare fur is of better quality, and is often more or less mixed with rabbit fur to produce hats in a more affordable price range. Beaver and coypu are synonymous with a better-quality felt hat. Muskrat fur is also used as a raw material.

By "fur" we mean the downy underfur of these animals, not the long frizzy hairs commonly known as fur. It is only this underfur, with its fibers locked together, that guarantees the strength of the felt hat.

How is the fur used to make felt harvested?

To harvest the down, the long hairs are plucked or sheared. The remaining underfur is then chemically treated to remove microscopic beards, resulting in better quality felt. The felt is then removed from the skin or, to be more precise, the skin is removed from the felt. To remove the skin, a machine removes it and cuts it with knives. The extracted fur retains the shape of the skin, the quality of which varies according to where it is cut: cheeks, flanks, ribs, etc. It is then packaged in bags. It is then packed in paper bags and stored. This fur is called "longstock", while trim fur is called "shortstock".

How is fur refined?

The bag of fur is delivered to the hat manufacturer. It then goes through several stages of blending and refining before it's ready to be used in hat manufacture. After blending, the fur takes on a mottled gray color, with the original color barely visible.

The blended fur is then "blown", i.e. the coagulated fur, air and dirt are removed. The material then resembles a fine sheet of gray cotton, soft, light and fluffy.

How is a felt hat made?

There are two main stages in making a felt hat.

First, the fur is worked into a large, loose cone, then the cone is shrunk and incorporated into the finished hat. Cone formation is the key to a successful felt hat. This process is carried out in a special machine. Imagine a vertical, cylindrical compartment, and inside this compartment, on the floor, a copper cone about 3 feet high, pointing upwards. This cone rotates slowly. It's perforated, and an extraction fan underneath draws air and loose fur from the chamber into the cone.

After being weighed, the fur is sucked down by the fan and deposited on the bearing cone. The fibers are deposited in fragile layers: they can be brushed off with a finger. The operator then carefully wraps the fibers around the cone and immerses them for a short time in a tank of hot water. This is when the felting begins: the hot water slightly shrinks the fibers, which are then knitted into a thin layer of felt.

The felt layer is removed from the cone, making it much larger than the finished hat. It is so delicate that it must be handled with extreme care. This is when the felt begins to shrink.

The body is folded, soaked in hot water, and rolled with pressure. From time to time, it is opened, checked, and if all goes well, the process is repeated. Under the combined action of hot water and pressure, the fibers shrink, tightening into each other until the body reaches its final size. It's so tightly felted that a strong man can't pull it apart.

This work is hard and laborious, especially as it has to be carried out quickly for fear of fading and damaging the felt. This task can be performed by machines, but most of the time it's done by hand, especially in the critical early stages, when the cone is large and delicate. The machines used resemble "roller" machines such as large washing spin-dryers. Hand rolling is simulated mechanically: the bodies are wrapped in sheets and led through the rollers soaked in hot water.

In addition to the beard or felting locking technique, there are several other interlacing and plastic techniques. According to the interlacing theory, fibers are constrained to one another by mechanical manipulation. The plastic theory holds that fur becomes temporarily plastic at higher temperatures, and represents the well-known greater ease of felting in acid solutions and the need to use hot water as well. Probably no single theory of felting represents all the facts.

A blank is obtained by stretching: in other words, the finished shape by blocking the crown and edging the rim. The crown is stretched on a machine on which the cone is placed, and stretched by metal fingers. The finger "massages" the tip of the cone, and presses the felt into the frame.

The shape of the felt hat is printed by wetting it and pulling it onto a block of wood. The final shape is solidified with steam and an iron. The wood for the blocks comes from American poplar, chosen for its lack of hard grain or striations. When the cone is pressed onto the wood, it does not imprint the wood's texture.

The original block is made by hand, then copied by machine. The hat maker needs not only a set of blocks for each hat style, but also blocks for each texture.

Adjusting the hat visor is called flanging. The brim is ironed flat and cut to the desired width. They are then curled, placed on a wooden rim, ironed again, and finally dried and pressed while remaining on the flange.

Between the time the body is made and the final shape of the hat, the felt headgear receives several treatments. It is dyed, a painstaking operation usually carried out in the early stages of felting. The brim is impregnated with just the right amount of shellac stiffener to hold it in place. Finally, the entire felt cap is rubbed with sandpaper several times, depending on the fineness required.

Finally, the felt hat is carefully cut, lined and sewn with leather on the band.

The production of a felt hat is therefore a slow and painstaking process, involving some fifty steps. That's why it takes an average of seven weeks to make a hat. This manufacturing process is handed down from generation to generation in the greatest secrecy, with just the right amount of machine and handwork to determine the quality of the finished product.