For 3M$ the hat stretcher Raiders fedora

Fedora · Post by **Fedora** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 4:05 pm

Here's some good show and tell.

First, I take a stock HJ, right out of the box with the 3 inch brim. I creased it Raiders style and here she is.

Back veiw

Then I take this little device here

I put the hat on it, turn it on to heat it up and then crank the stretcher out.

Here is what she looks like once I pull it off the stretcher. No stretch marks on the sides, by the way.

Sort of like a derby in crown shape. So, I crease it Raiders style and here is what she lends.

And a back view

Nah, I don't think this is how Swales created the Raider fedora. Regards, Fedora

Post by **Michaelson** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 4:27 pm

Will you be trimming the brim down to the dimensional cut on this one, Steve? That would be interesting to see in it's final form.

Regards! Michaelson

Indiana G · Post by **Indiana G** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 5:10 pm

uhm......ew

sorry....its just a far cry from what you normally produce steve.

Strider · Post by **Strider** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 5:14 pm

I actually don't think it looks all that bad, outside of that hilariously wide brim.

Abner1925 · Post by **Abner1925** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 6:02 pm

And the gratuitous amount of taper...

Arkansas Russell · Post by **Arkansas Russell** » Tue Sep 04, 2007 6:11 pm

WOW that sure aint a AB.
What do the hat makers think- that but having such a short crown that they save money on the felt? You just cant hardly find a tall crown anymore.
Of course custom hatters [Steve, Marc ect] and including Akubra have tall crowned hats.
The market is out there for hats of this kind I dont understand why there just isnt any.

3thoubucks · Post by **3thoubucks** » Wed Sep 05, 2007 12:57 am

About 2 weeks ago I saw a bowler hat in a movie, and had that familiar thought, "Was the Raiders hat blocked on one of those seemingly bulb shaped bowler blocks?" Looks like it might actually be an improvement on the stock HJ...? I don't think this is how Swales created the Raiders fedora either, but the use of a "Bowler" block is sure something I've thought a lot about.

ydam · Post by **ydam** » Wed Sep 05, 2007 1:33 am

sorry...i guess i am just trying to figure out what you are trying to say with the post. Is it that the hat is just not capable of obtaining the Raiders look? Are you just trying to show us the process of how you turn an out of the box HJ into a Raiders looking HJ? Or something else? I know i am not well versed in hat making and this is probably an easy question to answer for most people that read this thread, but what exactly arre you showing me here? Sorry if i am sounding like a noob...i am really not meaning to. I have just read this post too many times and not "got it".

GCR · Post by **GCR** » Wed Sep 05, 2007 1:50 am

ydam wrote:sorry...i guess i am just trying to figure out what you are trying to say with the post. Is it that the hat is just not capable of obtaining the Raiders look? Are you just trying to show us the process of how you turn an out of the box HJ into a Raiders looking HJ? Or something else? I know i am not well versed in hat making and this is probably an easy question to answer for most people that read this thread, but what exactly arre you showing me here? Sorry if i am sounding like a noob...i am really not meaning to. I have just read this post too many times and not "got it".

3thoubucks proposed a theory about 6 or 10 months back that the Raiders hat might possibly have been blocked using a heated, expanding block (as seen above), rather than a traditional wooden block. I forget the reasoning behind this theory, exactly, but I think it had to do with a possible "stretch mark" seen in one Raiders screencap or another. Steve is simply trying to demonstrate that this theory does not produce results anywhere near a "Raiders hat". This is NOT how he goes about reblocking /modifying an HJ for Magnoli.

He uses a regular wooden block for those, just as he would any hat, but (s has been described before), he uses one size up to account for shrinkage of the unstablized felt. In other words, if you buy a size 7 3/8 HJ from Magnoli, it began life as a size 7 1/2 that (intentionally) shrank down a size during the reblock process.

From what I can tell, Steve's post isn't aimed to undermine the HJ in any way, just trying to test a theory, that's all.

-GCR

ydam · Post by **ydam** » Wed Sep 05, 2007 1:54 am

kool...thanks again GCR...that clears alot up for me

I hope i didnt come across as trying to undermine Steve...i honestly just wanted to know where this came from and what exactly it was trying to prove.

binkmeisterRick · Post by **binkmeisterRick** » Wed Sep 05, 2007 9:57 am

ydam, 3thoubucks is on a constant quest to discover how each nuance of the original Raiders hat came to be. While many of us believe much of it was largely "accidental" and a product of how it just happened to be distressed, he has experimented and proposed numerous theories as to how it all came to be. Some of these theories have appeared to come out of left field, but one thing can be said of 3thoubucks: he is a true fan of the hat and is to be admired for his extensive research and work in order to reach the results he has obtained.

AC, on these kinds of blocks, you stretch them from front to back and not from side to side. If you were to look at the hat stretcher from above, you'd see that the shape resembles a standard oval-shaped wood hat block. It'd be interesting to see what would happen if you did try to stretch it from side to side, though my guess is that you'd just end up making the same hat, but with a reverse-dimentional brim.

Fedora · Post by **Fedora** » Wed Sep 05, 2007 10:19 am

From what I can tell, Steve's post isn't aimed to undermine the HJ in any way, just trying to test a theory, that's all.

Exactly!! I always wondered how 3M$ theory would pan out, and had one of Magnoli's HJs handy, and was about to strip it down to turn it into a Raiders fedora for one of his customers. This was the last hat of the batch that came in fully assembled, and a perfect canidate for the test. I was just curious myself how it would work out. What you get is a really domey hat, that is not the Raiders hat. The domey top can't pull of the Raiders look(as I had suspected).

Fedora, do you stretch it front to back or side to side, please?

Oh, its a front to back stretch. I was trying to see if the so called stretch marks on the Akubra would show up on the HJ. They didn't, once you pulled it off the stretcher.

What the stretcher does do is to change the shape of the hat, to a really domey hat, sort of like some of the domey bowler, or derbies you see in the old films.

What this tool is really good at doing is stretching out the taper of an old tapered hat, right before you pull it down over a non tapered wood block. And, this is what this tool was orginally used for. Many times a really tapered hat is hard to reblock because you can't manually pull the hat down hard enough over the block to stretch the top taper out. This little gem here is the tool that makes that easy. Its a reblock tool, in other words. It also makes a dandy bowler though.

As I said, I wanted to test 3M$ theory just to see if it was plausible. I was hoping it would work out, because this would really be the bees knees if I could use this tool to make a Raiders fedora, a perfect Raiders fedora with all of the nuances we see. My accessment is, that dog won't hunt. Regards, Fedora

3thoubucks · Post by **3thoubucks** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 1:22 am

3thoubucks proposed a theory about 6 or 10 months back

Not really my theory. It was a report by someone claiming to be an HJ employee, looking for the original Raiders block. Here's the thread viewtopic.php?t=13267&highlight=cambridge .....If Steve's heated expanding block looked more like this one, the results wouldn't be so bulb shape.

I was trying to see if the so called stretch marks on the Akubra would show up on the HJ. They didn't, once you pulled it off the stretcher.

But is the felt of the same stiffness? The felt that contacts the metal in effect, gets ironed, and should be a bit more compressed and stiffer than the felt in the gap. If Fedora made a batch of 10 hats like this, stacked them on top of each other and shipped them, would these marks show up? Probably more easilly than if made on a one piece wooden block. .................... Here's an extreme example of the "Akubra effect", and oklahoma_jones' explaination.

oklahoma_jones wrote:Two reasons for the dent.........placed on expanding hat stretcher during processing, and also being stacked with other hats..........see it all the time at the western store where I shop.

............. I can tell Fedora's hat was made on a stretcher- it has a flat spot on the top of the ribbon at the gap- like a Federation.

Fedora · Post by **Fedora** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 1:28 pm

If Steve's heated expanding block looked more like this one, the results wouldn't be so bulb shape.

You do have a point there.

Since Ford is actually between sizes, it is very possible that his hats were stretched out a little bit with a stretcher like you posted the pic of. Not saying that it was, but it would be very possible.

Personally, I now believe that Swales had that Raiders block in his shop, and took an off the shelf Poet and reblocked them to freshen them up. This would explain why the other two films had a different looking HJ. And also why you see the factory HJ stitch line below the ribbon in the other two films, but when you see the SOC hat, with the ribbon pushed up, you don't see the typical factory sewing machine stitches. This always bothered me. When the other two costumers placed their orders, they were sent factory HJs, with the factory stitching and the factory made bows. The Raiders fedora is different, and I think that was because Swales actually blocked those hats in his shop, or used a stretcher to size Ford's up. But since when I look at the stunt hats, I see the same blockshape as Ford's hat, I tend to think the stretcher is just an urban myth and Swales actually had the Raiders block in his shop. Perhaps it was what the old Poet looked like, as HJ was subcontracting out their hats later on to other factories, and the other two HJs from the latter films just used a factory hat from whomever was doing them at the time. We will never know. Fedora

3thoubucks · Post by **3thoubucks** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 2:51 am

Since Ford is actually between sizes

I have a new theory about the mark I see on the Raiders hat. - The liner stiching on my '72 HJ has a one inch gap between two of the liner stiches, on the same side as the Raiders anomaly. It's a little too far forward, but these big hand done stitches are probably put in differently on each hat. If Ford was stretching out a small hat, the liner thread would cinch up and cause a bunch in the crown felt. I reallly want to believe the Raiders hat was using high quality HJ felt, not Akubra felt.

Fedora · Post by **Fedora** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 10:17 am

I reallly want to believe the Raiders hat was using high quality HJ felt, not Akubra felt.

Actually, the felt from Akubra back then was better felt, for some reason, but all of the older hats used better felt. From just looking at the Raiders HJ on screen, it just appears to be a different, and higher quality felt than what came later. I really think since hats were dead as far as sales are concerned, back when the HJ was bought for the film, that hat probably was made from stock that had been with HJ for years. And they used up all of that felt for the film and shortly thereafter. When they reloaded, they had to go with a more modern, lower quality felt, which was also stiffer as felt tended to be, once hats fell out of fashion. The TOD and TLC felt. I know of a very old hatter in the midwest, who still has bodies from the early 1900's!!! When he finally uses all of that up, he will have to reload with modern felt. So, a case in point of what does happen with hat shops, once hats fall out of style. They get left a supply that just sits there, until they eventually use it up. I think the Raiders fedora was from the felt that HJ had used for years when hats were popular, and when HJ was a reputable name in hatters. Then like the rest, they sucumbed by necessity to the lower quality felt being made, fast and dirty for the almost non existent hat market. One this is for sure, the modern HJ would never have held that nice Raiders blockshape in the heat it was exposed to. That we can see the same Raiders hat on Ford throughout the film shows that felt was not inclined to taper like the modern stuff they use now. Fedora

If Ford was stretching out a small hat, the liner thread would cinch up and cause a bunch in the crown felt.

Yeah, since I know what he actually is in head size, the 58 sized HJ would be too tight on him. So, Swales either put his hats on a stretcher like you posted a pic of to get the hat between sizes, or he reblocked them and sewed in a sweat the size that Ford needed. But since I cannot see any difference between the stunt hats and Ford's hat in block shape, and it would be coincidental if the stunt hats had to be modified to fit the stunt guys, I tend to lean towards, Swales actually making the hats, or remaking them in his shop. You can't see the factory stitch lines in the stunt hats either by the way, so they were not machine sewn in by the factory, which means these hats were the older HJs, and lord knows how long they had them sitting around, or stored. I would bet HJs hat sales in that era were just about non existent. Just like over here, but more so. Fedora