Ski Cap with Integrated Headphones

Burton sells a really cool cap with integrated headphones for listening to music while participating in winter sports. These hats are well made, but they cost around $40. That's why Digital Cameron and I set out to make our own. We used a pair of old Koss headphones that had been chewed apart by Digital Cameron's dog, and a hat that we picked up at a reasonable price from a local retailer. Assuming you have either or both of the required materials, you could make your own for $0~$10. Click more to read on and for details on construction.

The first thing you gotta do is prepare the headphones. Don't worry if you have big over-the-ear headphones like ours, most of them still contain a reasonably small and flat driver that will work well for our application. Go ahead and take them apart. We just broke the headphones off the headband so it was easier to work with them.

The headphone pads should come off easily. Usually these are not secured in any way and can be pulled off with a little stretching. Sometimes they are glued. Don't worry about tearing them up because you won't need them later. On our headphones, taking of the pads revealed 3 screws. These are the only screws you need to undo for the headphones to come apart.

We saved the back piece of the headphones so we can make some sweet Footclan goggles later. The actual drivers are clipped onto the main piece of plastic. Bending the plastic a bit popped out the speakers without a problem.

The connection from the wire onto the speaker is pretty weak. Normally the way these are constructed reinforces this connection, but taking it all apart defeats this and we needed to reinforce the connection. This was easily done with a little JB weld on the back of the driver covered up with a small piece of electrical tape.

It was now time to figure out where to place them in the hat. Now, you can use any old hat, but there are some things to consider. We chose a hat that had a lining. This made thing easier because we could fit the headphones between the two layers and sew them together to keep the headphones in the right place. If you choose a hat that does not have a lining (or two layers), then you will need to use additional fabric to secure the headphones. If you don't have a hat that will work, now is a good time to buy one since winter gear is on sale.
We put the hat on Digital Cameron's head and I marked where his ears were with safety pins. We then cut slits on the inner lining above where the ear would be (for comfort). The slits we cut significantly smaller than the actual speaker because the fabric stretches, and the smaller the hole the better.

We fit the headphones into the slots we created and he tried it out. This is a good time to make adjustments because safety pins are a lot easier to move around than stitching! We got it about right and Cameron started sewing.

Once the earphones were in place there was a question of the cable. We decided it would be best coming out the back, since it will be out of the way while skiing or snowboarding. We secured the cables to the inside of the hat and rand them back to the rear seam. Then we cut a slit down the rear seam and put the cable between the two layers of fabric and sewed it back up.

All done! Digital Cameron will be testing it out today on the slopes, and will be reporting on how well it worked. Our tests worked out well, the hat sounded great and was very comfortable. The headphones do not stick out very much at all, and it looks pretty slick overall!