A good quality felt cowboy hat is quite expensive. Apart from the money value there will also be a pride of ownership associated with the hat. Naturally, you won’t want to see the hat become unwearable in a year or two. To prevent that from happening you must take good, proper care of the hat. Good and proper care will see the hat last for a good many seasons, its looks gaining character, so to speak.
Your great looking felt cowboy hat won’t look great if it is all grimy and dirty. Getting the dirt out of a felt cowboy hat is the devil itself. The felt is likely to get damaged in the process, too. As the old saying goes: ‘An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure’. It means that instead of spending time over cleaning the hat up, it will be better not to let the hat get soiled in the first place! The most common reason of soilage is the sweat and grime that gets transferred from your hands to the hat when you pick it up, or position it on your head. Moral: Make sure your hands are clean afore touching that felt cowboy hat.
Another simple way to prevent soilage is to handle the hat by the brim, never by the crown! Apart from preventing soilage, this will help to keep the hat in good shape. The more you handle the crown, the more it will get out of shape. There’s nothing worse than a bedraggled hat sitting on top of your head, I’ll say!
The hat will of course get a little dirty from normal wear. But what about when you’re not using it? Do you store the hat away? Do you know the proper way to store a felt cowboy hat? The proper way to store the hat is upside down in its own hat box. This way, your hat will neither get dirty nor out of shape. Lacking a hat box, you may hang the hat on a hat stand, and cover it.
Protect the hat from strong heat sources. That means you don’t leave the hat near the radiator or the furnace. Doing so will shrink the sweat band and that means you’ll not be able to get the hat to fit you again!
Protect the hat from getting wet. Water is enemy number one. In case it does get wet let the hat dry out normally and naturally. Be careful not to try to hasten the process by using a blower or, worse, a hair drier! The brim has a tendency to lose shape when it gets wet. To get the weight of the hat off the brim when you let it stand to dry, turn the sweat band inside out, and rest the hat on the sweat band instead. When the hat dries out, do what you can to reshape the sweat band and the rest of the hat to its original appearance and shape.
A felt cowboy hat will tolerate a little rain, now and again. But it will really be better if you use a hat cover for those rainy days.
The tips given in this article will keep that hat on your head for many, many years! Your hat will be lookin’ good, and you’ll be lookin’ good yourself! As we cowboys always say: A good head in a good hat!
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