Moderators: Indiana Jeff, Dalexs
We’ll have to agree to disagree. I’m not going to argue that Beaver felt won’t hold up to the elements better than a rabbit blend. But a beaver felt, the Raiders hat was not (sorry, there's no Santa Claus). The Raiders hat does not in anyway shape or form react like a beaver hat does. You can see it in Crystal Skull. The fedora in that film is a “caricature” of the original Raiders hat in my opinion, (no offense to Fedora). It sort of has a cartoon or comic book look to me. It doesn’t have real world good looks. Ford looks like the man with the big yellow hat (from Curious George) in Crystal Skull. The original Raiders hat (although flamboyant), still works (just barely) as far as looks go. What has happened to most Indiana Jones hats is that while trying to copy this look, they’ve flown too close to the sun.BendingOak wrote:I have to jump in here for a sec. Marc's felt from ABD is by fare the best in every way.
As for optimo, he makes a fine hat but in my opinion can't come close to a raider hat ( and do I have to say CS hat) as Steve's hats. The list of things Steve and Marc get right that others only can get close is to long to list.
Rundquist wrote:We’ll have to agree to disagree. I’m not going to argue that Beaver felt won’t hold up to the elements better than a rabbit blend. But a beaver felt, the Raiders hat was not (sorry, there's no Santa Claus). The Raiders hat does not in anyway shape or form react like a beaver hat does. You can see it in Crystal Skull. The fedora in that film is a “caricature” of the original Raiders hat in my opinion, (no offense to Fedora). It sort of has a cartoon or comic book look to me. It doesn’t have real world good looks. Ford looks like the man with the big yellow hat (from Curious George) in Crystal Skull. The original Raiders hat (although flamboyant), still works (just barely) as far as looks go. What has happened to most Indiana Jones hats is that while trying to copy this look, they’ve flown too close to the sun.BendingOak wrote:I have to jump in here for a sec. Marc's felt from ABD is by fare the best in every way.
As for optimo, he makes a fine hat but in my opinion can't come close to a raider hat ( and do I have to say CS hat) as Steve's hats. The list of things Steve and Marc get right that others only can get close is to long to list.
Now if you are going to argue who has the most skill, again an Indy hat maker up against Graham Thompson would be out of their league. They make good Indy hats, but let’s be serious. Knowing how to make one hat does not make you a master hatter. I mean no offense to the Indy hat makers. They do this community a great service. Opinions are one thing, but talking in absolutes is kind of ridicules and it kind of takes the fun out of the hobby. Cheers
Rundquist......You've reached into my head, rrrrrrripped out my thoughts and put them to paper....(just be careful with the use of the word "caricature"...I used it once, and #### near got accused of heracy)Rundquist wrote: We’ll have to agree to disagree. I’m not going to argue that Beaver felt won’t hold up to the elements better than a rabbit blend. But a beaver felt, the Raiders hat was not (sorry, there's no Santa Claus). The Raiders hat does not in anyway shape or form react like a beaver hat does. You can see it in Crystal Skull. The fedora in that film is a “caricature” of the original Raiders hat in my opinion, (no offense to Fedora). It sort of has a cartoon or comic book look to me. It doesn’t have real world good looks. Ford looks like the man with the big yellow hat (from Curious George) in Crystal Skull. The original Raiders hat (although flamboyant), still works (just barely) as far as looks go. What has happened to most Indiana Jones hats is that while trying to copy this look, they’ve flown too close to the sun.
No matter the man's politics, you have to agree with this statement. There is an opportunity now that most of the old-school gearheads never thought they'd see: getting gear from the original makers, from the original patterns, and for a lucky few, the actual original production materials. However, this gear is from the movie Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, not ROTLA.Opinions are one thing, but talking in absolutes is kind of ridicules and it kind of takes the fun out of the hobby. Cheers
But how do you empirically judge skill? Usually by the results, and the materials used play a large role in what the results are; if you're using cheap thread, it doesn't matter what kind of needlework you can do, the thread still won't be very durable; if you use wool felt, you can be as experienced a hatter as there is and the hat will still taper much quicker than a beaver hat. Skill and experience are important, but they're far from the be all and end all in hatmaking. -MAlso, materials used does not equate to skills (Mulcebar). There are hat makers out there that have been making hats for 20, 30 years. Marc & Steve have been making them for 5 (nothing against them).
I just don’t wear them. The last thing that I want is to walk down the street and have some shmuck call me “Indiana Jones”. Plus I wear a lot of patched flight jackets these days. You can’t wear a fedora with one. Plus I started wearing Irish caps & newsboy caps, which honestly are a lot cooler and hip in my opinion. Fedoras were a passing fancy. It was fun while it lasted.agent5 wrote:So, Rudquist, I was curious why you were getting rid of all your Optimo's?
If the same guy makes a jacket out of lambskin, is it made with less skill than the same jacket that he’s made out of goatskin? Is somebody wrong for liking lambskin even though goatskin will hold up much better with hard wear? Is goatskin really that much more expensive than lambskin? Beaver is heavy & does not breathe. It’s worthless to me. Now if I lived in New York and it was raining cats & dogs I might be inclined to go with it, and that’s only maybe. I like a light feel on my head. I’m not a fricken’ cowboy.Mulceber wrote:But how do you empirically judge skill? Usually by the results, and the materials used play a large role in what the results are; if you're using cheap thread, it doesn't matter what kind of needlework you can do, the thread still won't be very durable; if you use wool felt, you can be as experienced a hatter as there is and the hat will still taper much quicker than a beaver hat. Skill and experience are important, but they're far from the be all and end all in hatmaking. -MAlso, materials used does not equate to skills (Mulcebar). There are hat makers out there that have been making hats for 20, 30 years. Marc & Steve have been making them for 5 (nothing against them).
I have put forth the idea that a beaver felt hat is not a fedora (at least in the classic sense). It doesn't feel like one in my opinion. A "fedora" is a dress hat, not a work hat. The vintage hats that I've handled don't feel like a beaver hat. Granted, I haven't handled every vintage hat in the world. I'm just talking based on my experience. I also take issue with the idea that if it's not 100% beaver, then it's sub par. CheersDR Ulloa wrote: I seriously don't see what your getting at, though, Rundquist. Is an Indy style fedora not a fedora?
Dave
DR Ulloa wrote:I also don't understand why rabbit felt takes such a beating here. I love the softness of a rabbit hat and think it looks and acts great. But to say that a hat made of beaver felt is not a fedora is out right crazy. You clearly have been in the game for a long time and know a great deal about hats. Haven't you ever seen vintage fedoras made of beaver felt? Aren't those fedoras. Lee's new beaver hat is not far from what the vintage Borsalinos and Stetsons of yesteryear were. They were great factory made hats that will last a life time. Just look at how so many of these hats have survived and still look great. Many if not most of these vintage hats that we seen are beaver. Beaver is definately a superior material to work with. I liken beaver to leather car seats; I love the way they feel and smell, but if I want to race and drift the #### outta my car, I better have cloth seats so I don't slide around inside my car.
About the detail on your hats, yes there are great little nuances that make them great. But just becuase we don't see much of that here at COW doesn't mean that the hatters I mention before can't do these things. Just look at the hat Marc made for his sister's wedding. I'll try to find it, but the bow work on that hat is unparalleled. It was simply beautiful, complex and very uniqe and detail oriented.
Dave
It's hard to get a real custom fit without a head conformer. I hadn't heard that that was part of the process with any of the Indy hat makers. Indeed, I never flew to Chicago to have my head put into one of those things. Fit is important when buying a hat, period. No arguments. Everyone should know if they are a round oval, regular oval, or long oval. And I've heard of people with really strange head shapes that required a head conformer and a really custom hat made. But for the average person, the custom fit thing is over rated. I mean, my hats fit different depending on if I had a hair cut or not. There's only so perfect you can be anyhow. What's more important is that the fedora has "give" built into it.DR Ulloa wrote:I've never much cared for bound brims, but that one is done very nicely. You are right, it is all a matter of taste. But, lets get back on topic. The new Keppler looks great and what I love most is the ribbon. You can never tell with photos, but the color looks very close to the AB. I feel I have to reiterate that I would still take the AB over the Keppler simply for the custom fit, has nothing to do with Steve being the hatter for Crystal Skull. The fit will always be better on a custom hat even if you are getting the same hat everyone else is getting. I agree with that. The hat itself may not be custom, but the fit is. Not to mention the hand sewn parts, supperior bow work and supperior finish. Lee's hat is still, I would say, the closest hat you can get to AB quality without going custom. I give it the edge over the Henry simple because it is pure beaver. That is a big plus in my book.
Dave
LOL! This is getting ridiculous. Rundquist, you're making some really interesting and valid points, but COME ON! Some of these fedora "definitions" are HIGHLY suspect, based upon their sources. If we're going to use definitions, can we please use them from REAL dictionaries:Rundquist wrote: By many of these web definitions below, you can't really define the Indiana Jones hat as a fedora.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe ... n&ct=title
The key word is "might not". I don't know him well enough to know his capabilities, if left with just hand tools for hatting. Perhaps he could, I just dunno. He is correct in the statement, IMO. The truth is, once he found us, he stopped looking, but we were not told this until this year! I think his approach to the Indy hat and jacket, was more than just cosmetics. He actually wanted a very durable wardrobe, and we can argue whether or not this was the best thing to do. Many of the other hats he had samples of were inaccurate, or shoddy in materials. He knew the film was to be wet, and sought materials that he thought would hold up. A hat that could get wet and still look like a hat. To do this, one has to look for a stiff rabbit, or a softer beaver. If a rabbit hat would have been chosen, you can bet your bippy that it would have been cowboy stiff. We made 9 hats for Harrison, and they used only a few, with the 5 1/4 crowned hat seeing much of the action. If HJ had been used, they would have needed 3 dozen just for Harrison! You would just throw one away, and pick up another one. Bernie dried our hats out, and reused them, several times. I think two hats were used for Harrison in the new film, and a couple as props, like the last scene which has a different liner than the others. The liner in the last hat, was a plain liner from my supplier, while the other times we see ths inside of the hat, that liner was the peculiar liners I got from Art, and he got them from Optimo years ago. They are no longer made, and were from Europe. A real classy liner by the way, and very expensive looking. 
Fedora wrote:Lively discussion. Let me add a few things. First, Optimo does not make a handmade hat. Optimo is a small hat factory, with the same equipment one saw in the mass producers, like Stetson. So, while it is a custom hat, it falls within the range of a custom Stetson prior to 1970. The custom Stetson's of that era, were factory hats, but were pulled aside and finished up by hand in the front shop. So,an Optimo hat is a factory made custom hat. Plus, Graham does nothing but the basic hatmaking, the trim is left to his girls.
With that said, Optimo makes a fine looking hat!! And offers ANY KIND of hat, welts, bound brims, etc. But one has to wonder IF Graham has ever handsewn in a sweat, or made a bow. Probably NOT!!! I know he has the 36 finger blocking machine, that he uses to block the hats. Like the factories have. And I know he has a girl who does the trim work. The hatters here who handmake our hats, do ALL of the work. I think we might just be a bit better, as an all around hatter. Take his equipment away, and he might not be able to produce a hat.
On the felts used, for vintage fedoras, we can't forget that if you had the bucks, you could have bought a Stetson 7x, or 10x hat, a fedora, and got pure beaver fur. Yep, they sold pure beaver back then, but it was expensive!! I own both, and the felt is the best I have ever seen. It is much better than what we get today. But many of the hats sold as fedoras way back then were the less expensive rabbit hats, and blends. And we have come to represent fedoras by this kind of felt. But, be aware that if you wanted a better hat, the pure beaver fedoras were available, if you had deep pockets. Pure beaver dress hats were available from all of the big boys back then, Stetson, Knox, Cavanagh, Dobbs, etc. Remember that the early dress hats were pure beaver. Mercury is what allowed a lessor fur to be used in the making of a hat. You could take rabbit fur, treat it with mercury and get a beaver look and fell. The economics of the hat industry is how rabbit came into the equation. If you look at a mercury treated rabbit hat, you will be amazed at how much it takes on the look of beaver, at a much lower cost. No wonder they used this fur on so many hats. And a selling point of the blends was the addition of beaver fur in the mix. That is where the X system had its birth, the X representing the beaver content of the hat. The more X's the better and higher price of the hat.
If you take a 90 gram pure beaver body with no stiffener, except a little in the brim, it pulls off the Raiders look quite well. But, not perfectly, as part of the Raider look is actually due to low quality felt. A vintage Borsalino in pure rabbit would look more like a pure beaver hat in finish, as most vintage Borsalino owners will tell you. So, if the Raiders fedora had actually been vintage grade Borsalino felt, we would not have the bulging, sagging Raiders fedora that most of us love with a passion. This is funny to me, and I chuckle often in regards to this. I mean, I really dig high quality felts. But my fav hat is made from cheap felt. Heck, if you don't laugh at it, it can drive ya nuts.
Regarding the caricature of the Indy 4 hat, yeah, I do see the point. But, if it is a caricature, blame that on a very vintage block used. It was to be the starting point of a new Raiders block, and I just happen to have sent one hat in with this shape. Bernie picked it over the Raiders block that Marc and I both sent in. So, the CS block is actually a very old block,(and very rare) that is very close to the Raiders block, as I percieve it. The CS block has more taper, front and back than I percieve in the Raiders fedora. The shape from the front, is very Raiders looking though. A soft rabbit felt coming off of this block would look different from pure beaver, which does not move like rabbit. By the way, on the bottom of the CS block that Bernie picked, it has "fedora" imprinted on the bottom of the block. I owned 3 of the vintage blocks, and had it replicated in all sizes for Marc and I. So, the CS block is actually a very old fedora block. I am telling more than I should be, as I have kept this pretty close to the vest so far.
I watched the new film again over the weekend, and if you just see the hat from a distance, it looks very Indy to me. On the close up shots, you can definetly tell the felt is not the same as the other films. But, only us can tell!!! The general public, just sees a brown fedora. And like George said, if you placed stills of the hat and jacket side by side, you could not tell the difference. Now, he was speaking of "normal" folks when he said this, and not us!!!
We had mucho competition last year, and while the CS hat is not perfect, it was the best that Bernie could find. I found out just a month or so ago that he had been searchin' for t he hat for almost 6 months when he found Marc and I. He was on the verge of freakin' out. I just wish I would have known this way back then!
To end, I will again say, that to 99.9 per cent of the folks that watched KOTCS, saw no difference in the hat from the other films. And, this certainly would be regarded as a success in the BIG THREE's viewpoint. To me, I can see a big difference, but only in the felt. If a soft rabbit had been used, I think the match would have been better. But I always have thought that if Indy had of existed, he would have been wearing a beaver hat, due to his time spent in the West. The westerners, and cowboys would have chosen beaver over rabbit, due to the durabilty issues, and remember that in the old days, all western hats were soft, like fedoras. Only later on did they stiffen them up for Hollywood. I find this highly ironic in a way. The old dress hats, the original ones were stiff hats, needing a comformateur to fit properly. In the same era, the staple, or western hats were soft as a baby's butt. Now, time passed, and the soft fedora was introduced, a self conforming hat that did not need the conforateur and formillion. Later on, the western hat became stiff and all of those conformateurs were bought up by the western hatters! Now that is ironic to me. Fedora
Never said that it didn't. However there is a prevailing idea that beaver felt is everything to all people, and if you have a contrasting view you are ignorant. That’s like me saying that goatskin is the best leather for jackets. It’s the strongest. It’s thin. It's light. All those things are true and yet some people appreciate other leathers more for different characteristics. See my point? Leather is also a lot like felt in that how it's treated and finished is almost as important as the materials that it's made from. Cheersindyrocks wrote:Interesting thoughts. However, as time goes on, and a quality beaver hat is worn, it takes on it's own distinct characteristics and becomes more floppy. No, not the same as a rabbit, but it obviously has it's place.
Rundquist wrote:Never said that it didn't. However there is a prevailing idea that beaver felt is everything to all people, and if you have a contrasting view you are ignorant. That’s like me saying that goatskin is the best leather for jackets. It’s the strongest. It’s thin. It's light. All those things are true and yet some people appreciate other leathers more for different characteristics. See my point? Cheersindyrocks wrote:Interesting thoughts. However, as time goes on, and a quality beaver hat is worn, it takes on it's own distinct characteristics and becomes more floppy. No, not the same as a rabbit, but it obviously has it's place.
I did say that I was not sure if he could actually handmake a hat. Perhaps he could, but might be challenged in the sewing department. See, what you have to realize is the traditional hatter never did trim work. He blocked, sewed in the sweat with a Singer 101, or 107, if I recall correctly, and then the hat went to the person that trimmed the hat out. The trim work is what stands out on most hats, and is one of the details that make a hat nice, or not so nice.But putting forth the idea that Graham isn’t a complete hatter is reaching. I’ll take the refinement of one of his “factory” made hats any day over a hobbyist's “hand made beauties”. I guess the wood blocks on his web page are for his side business. Graham was learning about hats from old-time hatters when he was in junior high. I’ve talked to the other hatters about him. Who did you do your apprenticeship under? Hat making abilities was not a subject originally brought up by me and I know that you didn’t bring it up. But there was some serious “self gratification” by others going on earlier in this thread.
Yes,. beaver is a very dense felt. It doesn't breath as well as rabbit. The look of beaver felt is totally different from rabbit. The feel is totally different as well. It is more luxurous in feel. This is due to the fur being so fine. It felts better than rabbit, and it last longer. It can be reblocked countless times, and looks better with age. Not so for rabbit. In this sense, it is the ultimate fur to use, if longevity is an issue. You would probably like a lightweight beaver though. I think it would suit you more than you realize. For me, I would own nothing but pure beaver, but I am a snob in regards to felt. Once you have had champagne, it is hard to go back to Mad Dog 20 20.I’ll never be strong-armed into the “beaver felt is better for everyone” camp. You’d have to go way thinner than the hat body that you use for me personally to ever consider it. It’s too hot to wear where I live. It’s next to useless. I haven’t heard a rebuttal for beaver’s stiffness/thickness and general lack of breathe-ability. The Winchester hat body doesn’t cut it. I’d need to be shown a better beaver hat example for me to jump on the bandwagon (besides that wagon is full with "disciples" as is). Perhaps one of those vintage beaver felt hats would breathe, but I doubt it.
Nah. I prefer mine. They're slick and have swaggerFedora wrote:
But if you prefer this one.........go for it!!!
. They're more in line with what a leading man should be wearing (not that I consider myself such) However, if I wanted a tall Abe Lincoln-ish, hot, cartoonish-looking, unfinished, brown, beaver fedora, yours would be first on my list (or perhaps Keppler's). They're basically the same. I'm the only one in a position to judge since I've had both in my hand. Until somebody else has both, they should reserve judgment. CheersRundquist, we could make vinegar with all the sour grapes we're getting off you.PS- I’m sensing that you are getting a “sour grapes” vibe off of me,
