Indiana Bugs wrote:Fedora wrote:And the thing about this block is that it does have just a small amount of taper on the sides, but it creases out. Which makes for a less top heavy hat. I think one of the first mistakes I ever made was by making the blocks I made by hand, too top heavy, which really shows up an an inaccuracy in my first Raider fedoras that I made. It was a caricature, but many liked it. But it bothered me. As time has passed, I just cannot see the Raiders hat as being so full on the top. The look of the film hat seems to be "finessed" using a block with more taper than my original attempts, other than the look coming from a really full top. But, that is just my own opinion. Fedora
Steve,
Do you feel that most(?) of the vintage blocks youve run across were not quite so vertical? Iow, were the straight-sided blocks you made more stovepiped than most of vintage blocks, such as the one, for instance, that was used to create The Poet pre-1980?
First off, back when I was buying alot of vintage blocks, I was only buying ones that seemed to not have much taper. Some went right straight up, like the CS block, yet many had varying degrees of slight taper, with some even having more of a long radius on the sides, in place of the taper. So, any of these sorts of blocks always yielded decent Raider fedoras.
When I first made my own block, I made them straight up, on all sides. Yet when I started buying straighter vintage blocks, all seemed to go from a regular oval on the bottom, to a roundish oval on the top of the block, the top of the crown, that is. The vintage blocks all have this in common. But my early blocks did not. At the time I did not have a collection of vintage blocks to refer to, and made my first couple of blocks, by the seat of my pants.
And they were better than other blocks on various hats at the time but exagerrated somewhat. As time passed I started taking out the exagerrations, and ended up with what I use today. Only took bout 10 years to arrive here.
But, and this is the funny part. When I look at the Raiders hat today, in the film, I don't see the same hat I saw 15 years ago. The journey, this quest, either took me farther away from my original goal, or it has lead me to the wrong path.
When I see the Raiders hat today, it just seems so obvious that this hat used the traditional "morphing from a regular oval to a round oval" in its blockshape. This of course means there HAS to be a little front and back taper in the block. To what degree is the question, as vintage blocks vary in the amount used in this area. But I think one can get pretty close to it, and close enough as to be impossible to tell the difference.
In vintage blocks, you see many different types. I have tended to only buy ones that look to yield Indy fedoras. Bit I also bought a set that had taper, and quite a bit of it, to use for the Bogie Fedora, and then also the Fedora fedora as seen in the LC. The same block will yield both hats, except the Bogie has to be blocked at 6 inches instead of the 5 3/8 for the Fedora lid.
Regarding the Poet block, these days I see it as a block with a small amount of taper on the sides, and it starts aways up on the block, instead of down low. It was flatter on top rather than rounded, or domey. And it had front and back taper, but not to any great degree.
