How do you know if your suit is actually wool? If you’re reading this there’s good reason you are questioning the quality of your suit. The quickest way to tell if your suit is made out of wool or polyester is through conducting a fabric burn test because a burn test can show you what the material in question actually is.
So how do you do it?
You burn small pieces of fabric and you use three senses. Observe and make sure you smell and feel what goes one when you burn the fabric you do a fabric burn test!
Also, use some common sense and do not actually burn pieces of your suit just to tell that its really wool (unless you don’t care). A suit should usually comes with some extra pieces of fabric which is used to repair your suit if it ever gets damaged. Use that instead and carefully take small strings of fabric for the burn test.
What do you see?
When you burn the material in question, how does it burn and what kind of smoke do you see?
If it burns but stops after you take it away from the flame, it is most likely wool.
Then watch for smoke. What color is it? Is it black, white, or nothing? If it is pure wool, there should be a faint smoke that should disappear as it rises.
Remember that polyester will not burn the same as wool. Polyester will continue to burn even if you stop the flame and the material will partially melt and shrivel.
Smell?
The smell of the burnt wool fabric is actually the easiest way to determine if a material is wool or polyester. Since wool is natural and derived from living animals (sheep), it should smell like human hair when wool is burned. Wool when burned will smell like burnt human hair because of a protein called keratin that contains sulfur and is usually found human nails, hair, fur, hooves, and horn.
If you burn polyester, you will get a different smell. Polyester will smell like burnt plastic or something of that nature.
Feel?
After burning some wool, take the ashes and feel it. The ashes should disintegrate as you rub it. If it was polyester, it won’t easily disintegrate and parts of the ashes will clump.
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