Wool - your opinion?

bald taco ,i do most of my hunting in wet ,cold swampy rainforest.also open tops alpine type stuff.i have both modern goretex,polyprop,wick away sweat type materials and modern merino wool stuff as well as old jerseys ,swannys, wool singlets etc. i wear both at times and a combination of them works best. i couldnt give a rats arse about fashion etc, im a practical person who wears what works and wool has its place.if you are caught out with a fleece on in rain and wind your going hyperthermic way quicker than the guy standing next to you in the wool jersey.i wouldnt use a wool blanket over a down sleeping bag. but give me a wool beanie to keep my head warm anyday.
 
caseynz said:
bald taco ,i do most of my hunting in wet ,cold swampy rainforest.also open tops alpine type stuff.i have both modern goretex,polyprop,wick away sweat type materials and modern merino wool stuff as well as old jerseys ,swannys, wool singlets etc. i wear both at times and a combination of them works best. i couldnt give a rats arse about fashion etc, im a practical person who wears what works and wool has its place.if you are caught out with a fleece on in rain and wind your going hyperthermic way quicker than the guy standing next to you in the wool jersey.i wouldnt use a wool blanket over a down sleeping bag. but give me a wool beanie to keep my head warm anyday.
Click to expand...

I've seen mix and match work well for a lot of folk and good for them. I never turn to any of the people I know and and say “hey, you shouldn't be using that” whatever it is . The only people I would do that to would be mah woman or people in my charge that I am responsible for. [As it happens mah woman often uses a wool jumper under a waterproof or snowboard jacket for reasons of vanity at non critical times]. Firstly, that would violate my own ethics. Second, it potentially deprives me of the opportunity for a really good laugh. Third, perhaps there is something I can learn from them. I've been out in winter with a bald headed bloke that took no hat, wore a leather trenchcoat that became saturated and turned from black to blue, and who got wet up to his waist from straddling a log to cross a river. He was freezing and it cracked me up no end. Better still was he had no change of gear and his food was a bag off apples. Superb. I would have intervened had it become dangerous but as it was it was bloody hilarious. I did lend him a pair of gloves because he had none. In fact I lent him two pairs because he got the woolly lenders [the Bungle gloves] wet and I had to offer him my personal spares 'cos he couldn't even load and light the pipe. Since then he and I have become great friends, and it was probably the battering he took during that combined that he didn't moan once despite looking pretty green by the end that allowed that to develop. I did ask him before we went about his gear 'cos coming out with us could get a bit rough and he assured me he knew what he was doing. Alarm bells did go off when he said the sleeping bag he was taking was waterproof. At the time I knew of two sleeping bags on the planet that could claim that and they were both very expensive. He couldn't name the brand of his or even give an approximation of how much he paid for it, so my ears went up. I wasn't about to shout him down though, my mindset was strictly “if you think you know better than me then go for it Charlie, see what happens to you, but be aware that whilst I will save your life I will laugh like a drain at your discomfort”. That said, if I had known about the apples I might have nudged him a wee bit. Yeah, I'm very 'hands off' with pretty much everybody for varying reasons. Certainly I wouldn't be on t'intertubes telling someone what they should take, it simply wouldn't be consistent. Nah the only agenda I have is to cut through the BS when genuinely enquiring minds want to know. Forums like this can be a wealth of information for noobs but not all of that information is good or accurate, and sometimes positively dangerous. It wouldn't be hard at all to make a trail of threads here that the tyro could follow that would find them out barefoot, dressed like a Benedictine monk, without a lighter and only something that makes sparks, with an inappropriate knife [that someone told them was the best make in the world] in their little satchel, thinking that because they find a pair of TV prats in the wild given some credibility they too can be Lion-O of the wilderness at armageddon when all-satan breaks loose. As I see it the natural foil to that happening should be through observing each debate. Presuming we are all here to exchange information / inspirations rather than just preach and cnt each other off [no not you], ideally the strongest lines of argument will be the most informative because they cannot be shot down with reason. Certainly that's how I hope to learn here, shake the tree and see what is left standing. Similarly, that I how like my own ideas tested against ones that may be superior: Put my self out there against all-comers, and if you can't best me with reason I'll retain my understanding as a superior one. I would hope that is true for all of us here although occasionally it seems a few folk do make it under the wire [again not you]. Relating all that back to the wool thing and my beef is simply that there are often absolute and astonishing claims made about it on forums that beggar belief. I've heard the assertion numerous times that “wool is the survival fabric”. Well, whilst I can and do publicly recognize its merits I can clearly point to why such a statement is a crock of sh1t. It parallels the survival knife thing in that if you have foreknowledge of what tools you need to take then it isn't one. A proper example of survival clothing would have been whatever mah woman was wearing had her plain ditched over wherever on her way back from Australia a couple of weeks back. What it is not is what we choose to wear when we venture out into the wild whether that be a greasy chunky knit Aran sweater or something technical in Gore Windstopper. Certainly on some of the UK forums that isn't well understood, and I suspect that is the same for a few here. The model goes something like; “disaster strikes and somehow I manage to reprogramme the Holodeck and I'm stood there in my Friar Tuck suit, with a flint and steel and chopping knife, and that's why wool is good – 'cos it is better than cotton and doesn't catch fire as readily as synthetics”. Really? I'd venture the suggestion that unless you roam about like that all the time the chances are unlikely and you'll just have what you've got. However, with foreknowledge, which is what all of us here have we are liberated to make selections that cause a lot of the arguments there completely irrelevant. That is conspicuously the case with the wool versus cotton thing. That gets rinsed round and round as a merit of wool but lets examine that using a parallel I used before. “Are Wellington boots good for outdoor adventure / survival?” -answer “they're the best 'cos they are vastly superior to wooden clogs!”. If you were never even contemplating clogs that's not a great deal of use to you. Similarly the wool is better than cotton thing is a dead horse that none of us should be flogging now much less relying on in debate, but it happens, a lot. When I hear a case being made for something relying on something so weak that's a flag up right there. If wool has merits, and indeed it does, let's identify exactly what they are and are not relative to other relevant things. As it stands the case for wool is seldom made on a basis I can respect. It usually relies on either of two things [or may be three for those that suffer from BO]. One is what I have just said about the repeated and irrelevant comparisons to cotton and the other being it doesn't burn very well. Well surely now, with a stake through the heart of the 'better than cotton' issue once and for all, we are left with the burning thing. YeaHa, we have shaken the tree and that is what is left standing. We have a merit to explore. So then begins the next round of questioning – what do we give up in order to preserve that merit? What is it worth? What has to be compromised for you to retain it; ventilation, comfort, slipperiness, size, weight, bulk, windproofing, waterproofing, drying ability, something else, some combination? Do any of those things even matter to what you are doing? In a nutshell that's what I'm trying to get across. I'm not telling anyone what I think they should be using only shaking the tree and hopefully making myself and a few others think. When, as I described before, people do not respond well to questioning such as the thing that is: “Ask many of those people why with the exception of a few bits wound in to undergarments do they think it doesn't make expedition standard now, and you'll usually get the response “well it doesn't burn so easily and is better than cotton”. Do what? Ask them, “given that melt hazard is a prime consideration in the designing of military garments, and that wool can be made quite tough, and that it can be made rather quiet, and that wool serge has historically been used to make battledress – why has the modern military industry moved away from it toward synthetics and it only shows up in Eastern Block countries or India now?” and you'll often get the reply “well it doesn't burn so easily and is better than cotton”. Again, you effin what? You know at best they are tired of thinking. And when they go with “Sheep know what the heck they are doing” you know at that particular time they weren't thinking to begin with. Yeah, I've not got a particular antipathy toward wool or anything like that, I'm just aiming with the help of the membership here, to hold an honest understanding of it relative to other things. And given how the other things keep evolving and / or getting invented that understanding must be fluid [and not like the old dogmatic better than cotton thing]. I'm the same way about most things, take the sleeping bag question, “should I get a down bag or something from Snugpak?” . Responses that go “get a Snugpak 'cos it is better than a fibre pile bag from Buffalo or a wool blanket” really do just need filtering out as noise. Same with a lot of the woolly assertions I see made here. :)
 
Last edited:
Right, I've tried twice to address the text wall problem above. I dunno why that formats like that but it isn't me. Bored now, gonna do something else.
 
I have to agree, that unless you're at a mountain man rendezvous or other period specific dress occasion, that ignoring modern fabrics in outdoor settings is probably not the best of ideas :) I have lots of wool garments and they often find their way into my outdoor wardrobe when they are the most appropriate garment, but I also have a lot of "modern" fabrics/garments and if the situation dictates, then they are chosen. In most cases wool does make it into my outdoor wardrobe, but in most cases it's not the only fabric I'm wearing/carrying.
 
I'm a civil war reenactor- wool, I would have to say it's a love hate relationship- if it's cold I love it, if it's hot I hate it

Just my 2cents...
 
I like wool. Most of the folks who have mentored me into multi-day winter camping experiences were wool hounds. It works best in the cold and well below freezing weather. A lot modern fabrics fail under those circumstances. For example, gortex breathability gets bunged up by sublimation and you end up with ice inside your jacket. Wool has a great combination of medium wind resistance which a lot of people don't appreciate, but this attribute provides for excellent layering/venting management that synthetics don't seem to do to well on. It is bulky and heavy, but that doesn't seem as much an issue when you are wearing it as opposed to hauling it.

I'm not really crazy about wool blankets albeit they are great in the house, but I prefer a down or synthetic sleeping bag. I love high tech fabrics like silnylon for a tarp and don't mind the nylon on my pack boots. I even far prefer my gortex when the snow turns to slushy rain. But for deep cold I like the wool. Pretty much everybody I know who camps for 3 or more days in the winter on a regular basis gravitate towards wool clothing, even folks who are allergic to wool often choose synthetic base layers with wool outer layers for its utility. As much as some folks on this thread claim its all fashion, I don't think so. It has its place, and that place is the cold.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top