How do you wash your dark cloth?

[Alan Gales]

So are you telling us that when you sweat you smell fishy?

[Robert Opheim]

I have two - cold water in the washer and then the dryer. One of mine is a Delta - both are all cloth - I agree with Jim above for other materials.

[Robert Budding]

Just stand it in the corner . . .

[rcmartins]

Wandering through this thread I was a bit surprised that no one with a blackjacket chipped in with their experience. I have one and mine seems to be getting stained on the elastic paths. This is not serious but I am a bit picky with my equipment and would really like to have it pristine. Has anyone noticed that? Anyone solved that? How do you clean it?
thanks

[Keith S. Walklet]

The safest method for cleaning your BLACKJACKET is to follow the instructions on the care label inside the cloth. "Gently hand-wash with a mild detergent. Drip dry."

Those instructions are mainly to preserve the integrity of the silver fabric, which is coated. (edit) The earlier suggestion of using Woolite as a detergent is a good one.

[tgtaylor]

I bought mine, a toyo-view dark cloth, new at the same time that I bought my first LF camera (a Toyo of course) around 2002. I bought the camera, lens, dark cloth, 4 toyo holders, and a toyo loup all at the same time from B&H. Years went by without washing it. Pulling it out from the pack to take a photograph I would tell myself "you really need to launder it" but when the time came to do the laundry it was never included. One reason was probably that it was never with the soiled laundry; it was always somewhere else - in my pack or in the camera case with the camera. Then one day, about a year or so ago, I finally got serious and dug it out when going to the laundry and washed it with the whites. It came out clean, of course, and smelled about the same as before only with a very, very slight detergent smell (I carefully measure out the detergent so that it rinses from the fabric), and looked about the same as before it was washed.

Now years before, when I was about 16, I once went out on horseback too far to make it back to the house that night so I had to camp out. This was in the deep south (Mississippi) during winter so the daytime temperature was warm but it dropped at night. Except for the saddle blanket, I didn't have a sleeping bag or anything else to cover with at night. The fire was nice but you couldn't stay up all night keeping it fed and I recalled reading somewhere that the cowboys in the old west would sleep with their horses to keep warm. Now horses like to sleep standing up and after 15 minutes of pulling down on Sparkey's (that was his name) neck to get him to lay down and him pulling me back up, he finally gave up and laid down and I snuggled up to his breast (never lay on the backside!) between his legs and covered up with the saddle blanket. JESUS, did that blanket smell horsey! I made a promise to myself to wash the saddle blanket more often but now, looking back, I never kept it.

Thomas

[rcmartins]

Thank you Keith. Somehow I missed that instruction label. My fault. And that goes indeed a long to explain why no one ever asked . My apologies.
Being that the zone that is tainted is on the back, more or less that which rests over the shoulders, I will try to hand-wash just that zone.
Again, thank you.

[gleaf]

Wife side says lazy way spray it down with Fabeeze. Useable now, wash anytime later.

[Jim Noel]

I am planning on washing mine on it 50th birthday. it is only 35 now.
Hang it out in the sunshine and let it air for a day to get rid of the mustiness.

[John Kasaian]

I don't.
My dark cloth can now stand on it's own behind the 'dorff and take it's own photographs