I'm waiting for Steve to come in here and clear things up, since he made the hats.
Uh, ok. We creases all of the hats prior to sending them to Bernie, via Western Costume. No hats were turned by us. And since I know for a fact, Bernie detested the turn on the Raiders hat, I am fairly certain none were turned for this last film.
But.....several hats got saturated in the water scenes. The first one to do so, Bernie just left in the creases and let them dry while sitting on the brim. This caused the wet crown to move inwards(as they tend to do if you dry a hat in that manner) He called me, and I suggested he punch out the crowns, turn down the sweats and let them dry in this state. Which he did, and then he re-used those particular hats in the film. Now, on come days, for whatever reason, Bernie was not on site, during certain scenes, and the hat was not fussed over, like he tended to do. His temp., his replacement, did not keep the hat looking the way Bernie had done, and this miffed him somewhat, being the picky guy that he is. So, if a hat was turned, it was this other gentleman who did it, and of course, if you take an open crown hat, that has been dried, it is possible to put the creases in off center.....so it IS POSSIBLE. I just don't know, one way or the other.
I do know that if you turn a CS hat, and put in the creases deeper, in the top, it pulls off the Raiders look as well as any other hat does. But with some exagerration, of course, since the CS block is actually a straighter block than the Raiders block was. The CS block is perfectly straight on the sides, ala 3M$'s hats. While the Raiders block has a little taper, which creases out. Now, not the amount of taper seen in most hats, but it still had some taper, all the way around the hat.
The good thing about the CS block is that it can yield taper, it just depends upon how you crease this hat. And apparently, this was liked by Bernie, who could get the taper, or lack of, just by steaming the hat and working with the creases. It's a really versatile blockshape, and I think this was why he chose it, over the Raiders blocks we sent. It just gave him more clay to work with.
I don't think Ford is a full long oval head, but he might be a slight long oval, in which case, his head might warp the brims of the soft hats I sent. Remember, they started out fairly soft, then Bernie had me add shellac to keep the creases from popping out, and then he changed his mind again, and I sent the rest--of the softer felt. But, I think 3 of Ford's hats were pretty stiff, out of the 9 brown ones we made just for him. So, you are seeing our softer hats, but also no doubt in some scenes the stiffer ones.
In some scenes, it looks like the brim has a bit of a warp going on, like the hat was turned. But not to the degree of the Raiders fedora.
I think most of the hats in this last film were close to the LC hat in stiffness. I know one fan made the comment that the CS hat was not like a real fedora, as it looked like a western hat in felt....but, I must remind folks that the LC hat was the same way. Only the Raiders fedora looked to be made from a no stiffener rabbit felt, and you must compared ALL of the Indy hats, and not just compare the Raiders to the CS. To me, if you took the LC hat and made the brim larger, with cowboy creases, it would be indistinguishable from a western felt.
Western felt is no different from dress felt, EXCEPT, they add more shellac to the western hats! And generally western felt is much thicker. The CS hat was NOT a thick felt, just a very dense felt, due to the beaver fur felting tighter than rabbit does.
If you take a vintage pure beaver fedora, from any of the old hatmakers, like Stetson, it would appear the same as the CS fedora did, in texture. A finer felted hat. To confuse the old and new pourous rabbit with western felt is a mistake in judgment. The cheaper hats of yesteryear featured the porous rabbit, which came about because the rabbit felt was not felted as tightly as it could have been. As with the cheaper rabbit hats of today. To save time and costs, the cones are not run through the felting machine as many times, as the higher end rabbit hats. That is, it does not take as many man hours to make a loosely felted hat, which some confuse with a real vintage felt. When what they should be noticing is the lack of time spent making the felt. As you can see, this has been a sore subject with me, because face it, all felt is made the same way!! Some they just take more time with, in the felting stage. Fedora
