Care and maintenance of horse hair sporran

[MacGumerait]

I have a horsehair piper's sporran that I had packed away for about 30 years . It had developed two large waves in it due to the way it had been laying . The tassels also had the same waves .

I used the following method to remove the waves which worked very well :

1. Fill up the kitchen sink with mildly warm water .

2. Remove the tassels from the sporran .

3. Dip as much of the horse hair into the water as possible without getting the leather on the back wet for about 1 to 2 minutes . ( I actually tipped the sporran forward a bit to get more hair into the water which did get a bit of the leather wet when I hung it up , but it didn't hurt the leather . )

4. Lift the hair out of the water and let it drip for a moment , then dip and repeat 3 more times .

5. Hang the sporran up and let it drip dry .

6. Do the same with the tassels .

Once dry , the sporran and tassels looked brand new , nice and straight and smooth . This process worked very well ... at least for me .

Cheers , Mike