On the Penman website, John says that he took apart hats to see how they were constructed.Indiego Jones wrote:IMO, it isn't ok to take apart a jacket.
I do not see anything inherently wrong with this. It was part of how he learned his craft, and no one would argue against his products being uniquely his. Although the methodology isn't the same, it's not conceptually different from an artist replicating a painting as closely as possible stroke-by-stroke to better understand it.
So the way I see it, the bottom line here is: Is a BK jacket merely a copy of a Nowak, or is it its own thing? This is a legitimate question. People in this very thread have suggested that there are distinct differences between them. Whether those differences are improvements or not seems to be personal opinion, but there *are* differences.
And if there are distinct differences, did BK *EVER* release a jacket that was fundamentally indistinguishable from a Nowak, or were there changes from the very first jacket released? Because I think that's important to know.
Maybe taking apart a jacket is a short cut over observation, but if the end result is a product that *is* different from the original, I'm not certain it crosses the "recaster" line.
And I think what complicates this situation even more is that recasting itself exists in such a fuzzy gray area. It's considered perfectly acceptable to create a mold from an actual screen-used prop, but unacceptable for someone else to create a mold from *that* copy. Based on that logic, if someone got their hands on an actual Nowak screen-used jacket, made patterns, and created a virtually exact duplicate, they'd be within the "safe" zone of the prop community. That's what makes this such an interesting conversation.
I own both the TN and the BK, as I'm sure many do. I prefer the BK. Just my two bits. 
