overstock quote: "King pillow: 20 inches wide x 36 inches, (25 ounces) "
that includes the weight of the pillow case and any zipper, synthetic filling or other non-down ingredients. For one thing, 700 fill power x 25oz would be 17,500 cubic inches of down.
to further clarify my previous statements, any processor can legally claim any fill power they want to. according to my recent reasearch, the International Down and Feather Laboratory in Salt Lake City, UT can neither confirm the existance of nor have they tested 900fp down. Call them yourself to be sure of my comments if you wish.
What I discovered is this: "evaluation of accuracy for testing original fill power" is the title. the IDFL says this: "down processing factory normally uses no conditioning when measuring fill power after washing and sorting" they go on to say: "without conditioning fill power is always a changing value and never reproducible"
it is my educated guess that the 900 fill power claims of many processing factories (and adopted by gear makers, such as the north face and marmot, who have since dropped the 900 number and gone on with a safer, more conservative number ~ (850 to be exact) is a fudged, exagerrated number and will be quickly reduced as soon as it is boxed for shipping, used in garments or sleeping bags/quilts and cannot be accuratley tested again).
As I stated what I learned before, it is at their discretion to use (or not) the standard protocol for conditioning down using any 1 of the 5 accepted methods (oven heating, box conditioning, tumble dry, water rinse, or steam method) and by avoiding this protocol apparently can claim whatever they want, legally.
it is however a legal requirement to claim the cluster/feather percentage. That is why your garment tag will state something like: 90% down, 10% feather. Only the consumer can remove this tag, as we have all seen before on a mattress, sleeping bag, etc..
Im just trying to bring a level of reality to what seems to be hype. consider it the "snopes" of HF?
still a skeptic of the unusual and exraordinary, mikeinfhaz
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