Free Faux Fur for Mini Windscreen Projects

A few months ago when I was gathering information for my Zoom H1 Accessories episode, I was looking for cheap DIY 'dead cat' windscreen fur that I could use on said digital recorder. I didn't find anything that would effectively offset the $15 Furryhead that I ended up getting, but I did stumble upon a free resource of excellent mini-fur that costs nothing.

Premium Furs Inc. is a web retailer that sells very expensive (over $100/yard!) faux fur. The cool thing was that they offered up to three free samples that they would mail to you AT NO COST (remember the free gray card?). How could I resist that?

Learning from a forum that the Tissavel brand was the best for making dead cat windscreens, I went to the page for that brand. I found three I thought I'd try and took note of colors and item numbers. I then went to the contact us tab, where I entered all my shipping information and the sample information in the request/comment box. The samples I chose (pictured above, left to right) were Kentucky #207, Australuni #2482 and Vanoise #9629.

A week later, they showed up. The samples are smaller than I had hoped for (note the quarter in the picture to show scale), but can still be useful. While too small for my original idea of creating a dead cat for my Zoom H1, they can still be used to create windscreens for onboard camera mics or even lav mics. The fur will cut down on nasty wind noise and make audio capture that much more useable.