Does naphta clean trimmings, too?

[Torpedo]

Well, the title pretty much says it.

Does naphta work for cleaning hat trimmings (brim binding, ribbon) as it does for the felt body?

Up to now I just used alcohol for these parts, and successfully; but now I am facing a recalcitrant, tough case.

Can I use naphta safely and effectively?

Regards!

 

[RBH]

I would say yes... I always dip my whole hat in the stuff.

 

[DerMann]

The only thing I've read is that naptha might shrink sweatbands if they're made from a certain leather.

 

[funneman]

I submerged a Penny's Marathon overnight last week. The sweat stain on the ribbon in the front remains. To be honest I couldn't tell any difference at all. So either the hat wasn't as dirty as I thought it was or I didn't leave it in there long enough.[huh]

 

[John in Covina]

Sweat stains have a couple of components the body oils and salt and whatever else tends to come with the water.

The naptha should remove the oils and some of the schmutz with it but the salt it probably won't budge.

Try misting the stains with warm water and a clean cloth or sponge for dabbing.

 

[John in Covina]

Naptha is like dry cleaning your hat. The naptha and modern dry cleaning fluids disolve grease and oils and removes the dirt that is locked into that grease and oil. BUT they won't disolve other stuff because they don't chemically unlock them, like sugars and carbohydrates and in the case above probably salt. Those must be washed away with water which will disolve them.

If you spill this type of stuff on your dry clean only items you're supposed to tell the cleaner so they can treat (Wash) that area before dry cleaning and pressing. Pressing will burn the sugars and carbs and make a nasty stain that you can't get out.

Then again there are some stains that become locked in and you have to move onto other products. Blood is one, the nurses know of a product to get that out. DiDi-7 was good at some things but I wouldn't use it on a hat.

Might need to wash the ribbon, take it off the hat first if you can.

 

[Golden Earache]

In a naptha dunk, what happens to the paper items and the liner? Should they be removed?

 

[John in Covina]

In a naptha dunk, what happens to the paper items and the liner? Should they be removed?

*******
Two schools of thought on this, if it is a short term dunk leave everything in place, others would rather disassemble the hat and do the body by itself if it is going to be long term soaking and repeated washes.

I don't recall seeing any stories of detrimental affects to the intact hats from those that do the short term dunk.

 

[Golden Earache]

What is the time range of short term? The naptha will not dissolve the paper or remove the printing from it?

 

[John in Covina]

I'd figure less than an hour. Naptha won't disovle the liner or the paper and I can't recall anyone saying the printing came off either. Some caution not to get the leather sweat band soaked, others -not a big deal.

When it comes to these distilates such as naptha, acetone, lacquer thinner, MEK, the strength of them as a disolving agent is a property of the chemical. It is described as how "hot" the chemical is where hotter means it disolves a lot of stuff. Not as hot is less agressive. Naptha is not that agressive, where as others will disolve a lot of things including ink. One visible test we stumbled across is to take some of the above listed thinners and put a few drops into a styrofoam coffee cup. MEK will liquify the cup instantly. Others will soften it over time. It has to do with the chemical unlocking the molecular bonds of various items acting as a key to break down various hydrocabon molecule based plastics from long strings to shorter i think. I don't have enough of a chem background to take it further.