How to Straighten Crimped Faux Fur
Have you had your fursuit for a few years now and you’re noticing the armpits, butt, or just the fur on the suit overall getting crimped? Have you bought some fur that arrived in the mail creased? Did you leave your fursuit body in a duffel bag just a little too long? Here’s how to fix it!
Slicker brush. A straight comb will work too, but I find the slicker untangles even the tightest clumps.
This is the butt of one of my fursuits, too much lounging around the fursuit lounge for me! Even though I washed this recently and brush it religiously as it dries, its age is showing, the fur just tends to clump together.
1. Begin with clean dry fur. You don’t want to re-activate any stinky armpits or anything frightening like that! If its new from the fabric store fur that happens to be crimped, you don’t have to wash it.
2. Using your slicker brush brush out the affected area of the fursuit. For some types of fur fabrics, it may look fine now, but older fur tends to want to go back into little fur clumps with just a bit of movement. This process should help that.
3. Use a hairdryer and heat up the fur fibers. Yep that’s right: Heat! You are relaxing the plastic fibers in a controlled fashion. I used a medium-high heat worked on small areas at a time to accomplish the task, so I could straighten it out quickly. See below for an interesting heat test I did.
4. Some areas needed more work than others, especially the tail opening where my belt goes in and a lot of rubbing occurred. Go back over with the hairdryer and straighten it as many times as needed.
Here is the armpit area, lots of rubbing happens here as I move in my costume. Brushing seems to do OK, but since it goes back into little clumps this process helps straighten the fur back out again!
Hmm… But how much is TOO MUCH?
Well, I was curious, too! So I tested it on my hairdryer’s highest heat setting. I felt 4 minutes was a lot in one area (I couldn’t go 5 since my hairdryer itself was getting really hot!) this test was performed on a fur scrap, I encourage you to test these results at home, too!! Maybe you will have more results to share, I’d love to hear!
So how exactly does fur get crimped? What does it take? I used a high heat setting on my hairdryer and put a lid over the center of a piece of fur to see how it did. I considered the center of the fur (what was covered by the lid) as my control, since no hot air could blow through to reach it.
After 4 minutes straight of using the hairdryer on the fur I met my limit (it felt quite hot in my hand), I brushed it, and where the lid sat the pressure from the lid combined with the heat made an indent!
The end result was actually surprising, the texture of the fur outside and protected under was the same.
The fur on some areas of my 4-year old bodysuit was actually quite crimped, especially where I sat down on it a lot. So after several passes with the hairdryer and slicker brush to straighten back out, I think these results are very satisfying!
I hope this guide helps you recover your fur on your bodies, damaged fur fabric orders, and so on! Don’t hesitate to test on scraps before you dive in! Testing helps give us the confidence to learn new things!
