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Written by Tony Bristow
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 As I mentioned in the swanndri review, there are 2 ways of getting the water repellency back into your swanni. You could send it back to New Zealand for them to reproof it at the swanndri factory, with their secret formula. Or, you could do it yourself. With the help of Nikwax we have chosen the latter
Proofing the Swanni
As I mentioned in the swanndri review, there are 2 ways of getting the water repellency back into your swanni. You could send it back to New Zealand for them to reproof it at the swanndri factory, with their secret formula. Or, you could do it yourself. With the help of Nikwax we have chosen the latter, which will suit the hundreds, if not thousands of you who have swanndri clothing of some sort or another. If you were wondering if proofing your clothing yourself was viable, read on and we will let you know. When it comes to cleaning and proofing, one of the world leaders is Nikwax. We thought we would put them to the test on our bushcraft clothing which really does take a hammering (amongst other things it puts up with fire, water, mud, animal bits and smoke!). Basically our clothing takes a lot of stick and we need to look after it.
The first thing I needed to do was clean out the washing machine, it is fine to hand wash the clothing but as I was going to wash and then proof the coat it seemed easier to use the machine. I was also thinking of putting some rope in with some nikwax rope proof, and this clinched it. To clean the washing machine, I took out the dispenser tray and gave it a good clean. Then I cleaned the inside of the machine where the tray fits, after this I ran the washing machine on the hottest cycle I could which was 95ºC with nothing in it.
 The reason for doing all this is that normal washing powder is designed to make the fabrics being washed absorb as much water as possible, but this leaves residues on the garments and thus they wet out easier. It can also wash out water repellent coatings, which in this instance is a bad thing. It would ruin the washing and proofing process if the normal washing powder was still contaminating the machine.
So the first thing I needed to do was wash the swanni. For this I used techwash. This is a non-detergent soap that can be used for any garments. It gets them nice and clean without leaving any residues that could hinder the proofing process.
The next stage is the polar proof, this will proof woollen garments (Swanndri) as well as fibre pile, fleece and synthetic insulated clothing.
My Swanni had got to the point of being easily saturated, especially on the shoulders where it gets a lot of wear from packs and such. The arms and chest were also retaining water more easily. So I figured that I was going to have little difficulty identifying the effectiveness of the proofing treatment.
The polar proof was also applied via the washing machine. One benefit of the products being water based is that there is no need for the items being proofed, to be dry. You can wash and then treat the garment without taking it out of the machine. The instructions are very straight forward, using the bottle cap for measuring the amounts needed. After the proofing process you end up with a wet jacket that needs hanging up or tumble drying. I hung mine and it didn't take long to dry.
Now where was the bad weather? It was six weeks before I got to take the bushshirt out into some good testing weather. I had my fingers crossed that I would have a miraculous waterproof jacket that would be impervious to anything nature could throw at it. Alas, this was not the case. Even so, the treatment of the Swanni with the Nickwax polar proof did restore it to the same water resistant state that it was in when first purchased new. It still got soaked through in the end but it took considerably longer after being treated. So it is good and you can't complain, when it returns your kit to as good as new for considerably less than sending it back to NZ. The biggest pain was making sure the washing machine was clean. For just a single garment I would probably wash and treat it in the bath.
Conclusion
For restoring your woollen clothing to its previous water repellent splendour, you can't go wrong using these two products. Clean it and then restore it, easy as that. There are other ways of proofing woollen garments but I don't think there are any as easy as this. A well deserved 10/10 for an excellent product.
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