Re-filling Old Down Vests

[Bruce Kirk]

I am engaged in a project to re-fill several old down vests with new and better down. I have started with a Cabela's vest. It is illuminating to see what they put in there. About half of the fill was goose down-oriented the rest from other poultry I imagine. There were some huge feathers – not from geese. All of the stuff collectively, was dirty and dusty – even twigs were included. It's kind of disgusting thinking I was wearing this vest. After completely emptying the vest of "Cabela's-down" I plan to wask/dry it before re-filling. I have 800 (Canadian white) from Thru Hiker and some 900 (Hungarian and 97/3) fill from Speer Hammocks. I will be installing each on different vests so i can report back to this Forum sometime in the future, which brand of bulk purchase down is actually the warmest. Question for the group – I've heard that you can have too much of a good thing in respect of stuffing a down garment and there is some subjective point of negative return where adding more down actually decreases the effective insulation????…is this an urban legend or a truth? If true, what kind of criteria or observations may I use to reach near but not pass this subjective threshhold? I'd like to get as much insulation as I can for the sake of all my trouble in de-lousing the vest from the Cabela's down-stuff, but in doing so, I don't want to over-do it if there is a penalty for over-doing it. On the other hand I have plenty of down if there is no penalty involved in over-filling. What think ye?

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