What does re-blocking do?

[Indiana Johnson]

Hello all,
My current Fedora is a rather stiff, half rabbit / half beaver teardrop fedora built by JW hats in Salt Lake City Utah. It's my every day hat that I love, even though I plan to buy an Adventurebilt some day. I had it for a while before I joined this forum and learned about tapering. My hat has a taper to it, but don't remember if it came that way, or if it shrank in the rain. Will a reblock straighten or restretch it, or am I stuck just trying to keep it from shrinking more? Any info would be appreciated.

[Ripper]

Im no expert, there are plenty on here that are.I had mine redone by JP Designs and it came out fantastic! A reblock basicly refurbishes(sp?) your hat. Ill direct you to my post viewtopic.php?t=18985

[Scandinavia Jones]

Reblocking a hat does reshape and straighten the crown. The outcome is depending on the shape of the block. For the Indiana Jones look, a very nearly untapered block is used, but certain models of fedoras are designed with some taper and thus the blocks have it too...

Do you want to reshape your fedora into an Indy hat, or just give new life to your teardrop-crown lid? If going for the former alternative, provided there's enough crown height in your hat, it could likely be modified into an Indy hat.

[Indiana Johnson]

More just curiosity about the process. I kind of doubt the hat tapered from use, it hasn't shrunk any tighter around my head, it probably came that way. The hat itself is actually still in great shape, so a reblock is probably not necessary yet. I wore it last week on the deer hunt for 6 days. I am happy to report it fits my head so well, I could ride a 4-wheeler ATV at 45 mph and it stayed on without help. Once I hit 50 mph I had to reach up and hold it on.
One of these days I'll post some pics. It's really a great hat. My wife loves it, too.