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Felt Hat Question


Tequila Shooter

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Can holes in a felt hat be fixed?  I bought a used hat that has a couple of #8 shot holes in it that were a ricochet.  Can the holes be fixed?  If not I can always make up a good story about a gunfight ;)

 

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Pop rivets? 

How cosmetic did you want to be? 

You could always hang your RO1 & 2 pins over the holes? 

 

Truthfully, I bet a good hat maker could fix the holes acceptably.  

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I got a bullit stuck in mine.I glued it in place.Glad I had it on.

                                                                                                                     Largo

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Was at a match in Arizona a couple years ago and one fella couldn't seem to keep his beautiful high end hat from flying off in the slightest of breeze. He was worried about "hat hair"it seemed.  Towards the end of the day while he was standing at the LT waiting to shoot it again decided to fly down range and landed amongst the shotgun knock downs and gained some instant character from shot and splatter! After the laughter died down and the hat was retrieved, he then managed to mash it down on his head and keep it there! 

Wear Your hat with pride, and always have a good story about how it happened ready to tell!;)

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A professional hatter can steam press in some repair felt into small holes. 

 

But, Yes, you can do a repair job yourself, and if you are careful, it won't show.   I've repaired a broken crown crease that broke and became a hole about pencil diameter. 

 

First, I had to stop taking my hat off by grabbing the crown.  Handle it by the brim instead. 

 

Then, after searching on some felt hat repair forums, I found this technique.   Remove liner from the inside of crown enough to get to the felt inside the liner (where this won't show).   With a dull knife, scrape and scratch up a ball of felt that is about 4 times diameter of the hole you want to fix.   Get some really good water resistant or waterproof carpenters glue that dries clear or tan, made of poly vinyl acetate.   Titebond type III wood glue is a really great one.   Mix enough of the felt ball with a little glue (enough to wet all the felt fibers) and press into the hole.   Let that dry a little so it just starts to firm up, and take some loose felt and press that over the plugged hole, and with a fingertip or q-tip, smooth the surface and make the fibers blend into the hat surface.   You want to use the felt scraped from the same hat, so you get best possible color match.   A pure white hat may require finding a white colored PVA based glue.   But I used the Titebond III glue, that dries tan, on a silver belly hat and the felt overpowers the tan, and the repair dries very close to the original felt.  PVA will be flexible and water resistant - I've had that hat out in rains without the repair showing damage - for about six years now.

 

Small shot holes ought to be a cinch!   

Good luck, GJ

 

 

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Tequila,

Since the holes are small,try this:

With a sharp blade,scrape just enough "lint" from the felt to fill the holes from the inside by pushing through from the inside (pick an in conspicuous spot under the brim or inside the crown to get your filler).Apply a little heat activated fabric adhesive to the spot and heat with an iron.

Hope this works for ya

Choctaw

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