The hatter I spoke of earlier has repeatedly told me that pure beaver hats come in only natural color (a greyish, light tan) or silver belly/white. According to him, pure beaver felt cannot be made any "color" such as brown, black, medium to dark grey, etc. due to the fact that the hat will not accept the dye. As such, most of his high "X" rated hats are not pure beaver. Heck, most of them feel like sand paper compared to my apparently pure beaver, beaver AB (by the way, he has seen it, felt it, and claimed it to be a non-beaver hat, then claimed to to a better job, but not in beaver felt since that color in beaver felt doesn't exist ). But enough of that...
I am so surprised by this hatter saying this. He must have forgotten that the original beaver hats, top hats, were mostly all......black!!!! Yep, that pure beaver took the dye quite well, and it was a dye that was inferiour to modern dyes.
You have to be careful when forming opinions, based upon what some hatters say. I am still astounded when I read something like the above quote.
On the X system, at one time, it was an indication of beaver fur content. Not anymore! The X system has been vulgarized to mean almost ANYTHING today. I once heard of a million X hat!!!
I liked the way the old Stetson Company used the X system, because they clearly told folks what the X's meant. Later on, the marketing folks took this and ran with it, forever changing the original meaning of the term.
For me, I like the more honest method of just telling what the beaver content is. Like a 80/20 hat, 80 per cent beaver, 20 per cent rabbit, or hare, or whatever
One old timer, in the D. Henderson, Hat Talk Book, even showed his "old timers" disease by making the statement to her, that there were never any pure beaver fur hats!! His claim was that pure beaver fur had no barbs, and therefore would not "felt"! Of course this was totally insane. When Marc sent me pics of the microscopic analysis of beaver fur, the pics clearly showed that not only did beaver fur have barbs, but many more barbs than rabbit fur, which was the reason beaver was the most desirable fur to use back in the 18th century for making great hats. The barbs is what allows the fur to interlock, or "felt" thereby creating the material known as felt. The more barbs, the better the felting, and the stronger the felt. Not to mention that beaver fur is much smaller in diameter than rabbit, and other furs, which creates a tighter felted hat, more dense.
There was a reason the beaver went extinct in Europe!!! But not the rabbit. And our American West was opened up, due to the beaver fur trade with Europe, who still wanted beaver fur, but had ran out basically. And America and Canada had plenty of those rodents!!! What put a hurting on the fur trade was the move to silk, for top hats.
One more thing. Since beaver was the desired fur for hats, for eons, once it was discovered that mercury would turn rabbit and other furs into something close to beaver in tighness of weave(for lack of a better term) and give it a more beaver like "feel", the cheaper rabbit furs suddenly took off, and became the standard for hats in the early 20th century. Beaver was expensive, compared to rabbit, because you can domesticate rabbits, and we have done so. While beaver has to remain wild. The cheaper rabbit fur, when treated with mercury, made a very good hat, considering you were using rabbit, instead of beaver.
One last fact. Beaver fur, without using mercury, (or any other chemical that raises up the barbs or scales on fur) will "felt" and make the felt used for hats. And this fact is one reason it was so sought after. It "felts" naturally, while other furs need some help, in this case, a chemical that raises up the barbs. But, if you use mercury on beaver fur, you get a hat that is par none, in the world of felt.
Mercury was used by the Old West ladies of the evening on their eye lashes, an early mascara, if you will. The mercury actually fluffs up hair, swelling it up so as to appear fuller, the way mascara does except with mercury, the actual hair swells. And of course, this swelling causes the barbs to stick out from the shaft even more. This puffing up of the fur, gives the hat a totally different feel. If you touch a real mercury hat, and then a modern one, the difference is very noticable. Mercury gives a very expensive feel to any fur, especially rabbit, which needed it anyways, to compete with beaver hats. So, mercury allowed lessor furs to enter into the hat market, and then these lessor furs stayed with us, even after mercury was banned. The main reason was the cost of rabbit compared to beaver.
Gosh, I can't seem to stop.........
Ok, one last thing. Promise. Do you guys know WHY the lightweight hats came into existence? Not because of demand. They came into existence when we experienced fur shortages, like during WW1. The major hatters, like Stetson, had trouble getting enough fur to meet their quotas. So, in a move to stretch out what they could get, they decided to make the hats thinner, and lighter in weight. The public at first balked, as they were use to more fur in their hats, which meant the hats would last longer. (refurbs was a flourishing business) But, with time, the thinner felts became the norm.
What cracks me up today is to read some guy who maintains only a thin dress felt is pure vintage, and sets the standard for dress felt. Like the thin felt is the only felt worth considering for a fine hat!! What they don't realize is the thinner felts were made as a cost cutting measure!
Then folks got used to it, and it suddenly became the standard for dress felt. It is funny how the need to cut costs, becomes the rosetta stone for determining quality.
The best furs for hats come from wild animals. Because the underfur, that keeps the animal warm is thicker on wild critters. And generally finer in size. Which make a better hat. At one time, the Australian rabbit was the best rabbit to be had, for hatmaking. Because they were wild. And, they were overrun with them. Akubra used to use them, and this is why Akubra at one time made really great hats. Now, I have heard, and I cannot verify this, just heard it from an old man who owned nothing but vintage Akubras, that they no longer use their wild rabbits. I hope this is not factual, but he insisted that it was. He told me that they are importing their rabbit fur today, from Europe, the domesticated rabbit, eaten by the French. For economic reasons. I have to give him some credence, because the vintage Akubras that he pulled out and let me handle were on par with vintage Borsalinos!!! And they were pure rabbit, and hare hats. And he said this change was done within the last few decades. Seems like he said they changed in the 1960's, but don't hold me to that. Could have been later.
Now, this change he spoke of, MAY have been nothing more than comparing a mercury made Akubra with a non mercury Akubra. I just know that the vintage Akubras were much better looking hats, but the same can be said of comparing a real Stetson from Phili, with the modern ones from Hatco.(they recently sold out by the way) But I do know something changed at Akubra, just not exactly sure if it was the fur used, or if mercury was the culprit. I saw it with my own eyes. Fedora
). But enough of that...
), who also thought the AB was a great hat - though both thought the crown was too tall. I had to explain the whole thing....
I would have thought that at least a trace of mercury would have remained, just like the traces of mercury that exist in fish. 
