The profile is not all one could wish for but what are you gonna do with the material at hand?
The center dent was incredibly hard to get even this close to right. It really holds the creases from the ridiculous bash DP puts in these hats to begin with this. Add to that the absurd amount of taper these hats possess off the shelf and it's a real beast to get this cheap wool felt to cooperate.
But in the immortal words of Rodney Dangerfield "What did ya, get this hat free with a bowl of soup? . . . Looks good on you, though."
By the way the sweat stains are honestly come by -- I wear this thing everywhere, even on my hot summer hikes into the San Gabriel mountains. I actually like the stains . . . makes it a look a tiny bit more authentic.
So what I did was, basically I wetted it down, popped out the stupid bash, and peeled back enough of the liner to fit my hand inside so I could use my fingers on both sides to smooth out the original creases. I let it dry for an hour or so and then started working that thang. It took a while and more re-wetting to kind of pull the crown up some, add a little height to it... It was actually very difficult! Felt like a taffy pull from time to time.
It is obvious as you work with this material what cheap, crummy felt this is. And it won't take another round of this wetting/stretching deal; the surface was pilling up a little bit. But after it dried overnight I brushed it and tweaked the pinch, and it's as far as it can go, I think, to looking like an "Indy hat" should. I was worried, after reading many warnings, about tackling this but heck, I got this already cheap hat at a 35% discount, so whatever, it's not even worth worrying about. If I wrecked it... well I'd just have to order that Fed IV before I'd saved up enough money. The wife would understand. Yeah yeah sure . . . that's the ticket.
My verdict overall? Well, it's . . . an improvement. About all that can be expected of a hat that is so far away from a SA "Indy hat" in the first place. At least instead of not even being in the same hemisphere as a proper "Indy hat" it looks a teeny bit more like -- maybe a Temple hat.
Don't get me wrong -- it is still not even close. Just an improvement. I pondered replacing the ribbon but really this hat is not worth putting one more cent or hour's worth of work into, IMHO. Any money I would spend on a ribbon goes into my little can of savings for a Fed IV (and later for an AB, but that might take years . . .) contributions welcome LOL!
, i destroyed my DP trying to get it to no longer have that tear dent. needless to say it ended up in the trash bin.
