Club Obi Wan

Hey all,

After the first week with my AB, a week of comfort and the true feeling of being able to slap a fedora on with one hand and dash out the door, I can honestly say it is the best hat I have ever owned.

With that sense of relief comes a calm, and with that calm comes the wish to tinker with older hats. My Akubra Federation is the only other hat I own, given to me by Rundquist years ago in SoCal. He bashed it himself and I have never changed it. It was as close to Raiders as an Akubra could get...pre-turn revelation.

Since that time, it has experienced the heat of Death Valley, sleet, hail, snow, intense rain, humid heat, being crushed, dropped, sat on, and a whole slew of other misfortunes. It still looks great, and is now so soft and pliable that I can put a Last Crusade bash in the back of it with my fingers and wear it backwards as a totally different hat!

Anyway, tonight I decided to give it that Raiders turn. It was a very successful experiment for this beaten hat which I can now say, in the brim anyway, looks completely Cairo.

Ignore the black ribbon (yeah, a lot of you missed those days), ignore the bow being too far forward, and ignore the tapering in the crown. This is purely about the brim and what it will do on a turn after three years of softening, weathering, and abuse without any reblocks, care, or Scotchguard. Dang the Akubra is a tough hat!

It's already turned! HAHA

IndyFrench wrote:It's already turned! HAHA

What kind of 'ha-ha' was that...?
Was that a MOWAR-HA-HA?
Or was that a heh-heh, or was it a tee-hee-hee or a haa-haaaa (like that kid in The Simpsons?)

Nice lookin' Akubra though, Mike.

I think that was a, MOWAR-HA-HA!

Could we start a poll?

Very nice hat!

That is a turned brim.

Turned brim.

In studying the Cairo scenes, the upward tilt is not as pronounced as in say, Raven Bar or Well of Souls, likely because the hat is just plain tired and worn out - the brim just doesn't have the energy - LOL.

However, I am also aware that as the hat shrinks over time, as all new hats do to a degree, the pressure on the front and back of the sweat will increase and as I have a long oval head, this will precipitate greater tilt on the brim as the hat becomes tighter on the bow and stern.

I didn't want to start out with a wild flare in the brim because that flare will eventually become wild as it shrinks.

Mike

French,

I can TOTALLY see some reverse taper action in that above pic, fantastic. How'd you get it to do that?

Regards,

Strider - brace yourself

I SAT ON IT. Deliberately per Steve Delk's instructions.

It was hard the first time - but now I sit on it at least once a day for ten seconds to a half minute.

Trust me...

Hey, it's cool. I've sat on mine and beat it up more times than I can remember. I've kicked it, sat on it, stepped on it, rolled around in it, threw it against the wall really hard, threw it up into the air and punched it, etc. I even kneaded it around like dough in my hands today just to show a friend of mine that you can scrunch it up into a ball and it will be fine.

That's an interesting way of getting reverse taper, though
Welcome to the Adventurebilt Club.

Regards,