I have always wanted an Indiana Jones hat, but other stuff took priority for years & years. I finally pulled the trigger and got one only to be disappointed.
This is how it arrived
Severely tapered and after steaming out the bash I discovered that the crown was very lopsided… I knew I’d have to make a block and re-block the hat to ever get it right. This thread will document how I did that. I hope it proves to be useful
To get started I had to determine how to shape the circumference
I did this using my Akubra Federation IV as a pattern
Once I had this template I could transfer it to my wood which was 2x8” pine scrap. I know framing lumber isn’t ideal but it was free and I’m not a hat maker so durability isn’t really a concern.
I traced out my shape using the cardboard template 4 times, and cut them out on the bandsaw. I then had to spend some time with my belt sander getting them to just the right size. I eventually got there, and I glued them up.
Now I needed to determine how to carve it, and lucky for me Herbert & Johnson have some great pictures of open-crown Poets that I used for reference.
Front
Side
You can see I used grid lines to get it scaled properly since I know the crown height needs to be 5.5” it was pretty easy
I’ll remove wood in multiple facets to give me what I’m looking for.
Each facet I will remove is color coded here
*Blue will go 1st. This will taper the front and back to match the photo
*Red second to remove the bulk of the waste
*Green 3rd
*Yellow last to leave me with my final shape
I’ll be using a Shinto Rasp to remove this material. This tool makes quick work of it
Marked out my guidelines to start the carving
Remove the Blue section in my diagram
On to removing the red facet in my diagram
Done
Now we move on to the Green facets
Marked
Removed
On to the Yellow facets
I made some contour gauges to verify my curves
You can see they match perfectly even before smoothing out the rough rasp lines
Fits even better after smoothing out
I’ll call that done
