Originally Posted by
B. Carfree
If I found Merino wool sweaters at the thrift, I would be inclined to use them as sweaters.
I tried that, and it didn't work so well. This was a huge surprise. Wool is a miracle fabric, and merino is some of the best wool around, so it should be an ideal sweater for cyclists. But it's not. As a midlayer, it holds too much sweat. I tried a 30 mile ride on a cold, windy day, with a merino base layer and a light to mid weight merino sweater over it, under a wind breaker, and pretty soon the sweater was saturated in sweat.
I tried the same experiment (many times) in a cashmere mid layer, and stayed dry. The sweat gets pulled outward, and then dissipates away. Unfortunately, cashmere is a lot harder to come by in thrift stores; I've found three of these so far, but my girlfriend took one of them.
Ultimately I'm going to make cashmere cycling pants, but I'm practicing on merino first.