Club Obi Wan

I picked this up in an antique store today for $45. Roughly an Akubra Federation block shape. 5 1/2 crown, 2 7/8 brim, 1 3/4 ribbon. It's a couple sizes too big (7 1/2), so I can fold and stuff the sweat, pleat the crown and cinch the ribbon, which will take out the taper. I'll remove the bound edge and put a darker ribbon on. The price tag is still in it, $15, that's why it's called a Dobbs Fifteen. "Dobbs FIFTEEN" is stamped into the sweatband also. This is vintage felt. Smooth as butter and VERY thin. My guess is the felt in the top of the crown is only about a millimeter thick. But it's so dense, when you bash or unbash it, it makes loud little popping sounds. My take on vintage felt is that it uses only the finest of the finest hairs, while modern hats use corse hair as well. If I look at my Feds, I can see some individual hairs, while you can't see any in the vintage stuff.

looks good. be sure to post pics of the finished product.

Keep this project VERY hush hush. The vintage hat folks are going to have an absolute heart attack, then burn you in effigy when they read what you're about to do to this vintage felt hat classic. A Dobbs 15, no less! with original paperwork still inside!

Regards! Michaelson

Too late Michaelson! I already got the ribbons off and tried all the mods, but I'll never get a Raiders hat out of it. Vintage felt is remarkable, beautifull, luxurious- It will do things a thick crude felt won't...but it can't do miracles, (as some suggest it might ), at least not this example. - Anyway, it's instructive to have it. -- I'll call it my "Mythbusters hat" - not only because, it has ended up bashed like the Adam Savage hat, a tear-drop with a loose pinch, and too much brim curl and will remain ribbonless. P.S.- Folding that half century old sweat cracked the the surface of the leather pretty good.

Folding that half century old sweat cracked the the surface of the leather pretty good

If you would have put some Pecards on for a couple days I bet that wouldn't have happened.

I have 2 vintage hats I'm going to be selling soon myself. Both are Mallory's and one in particular it total vintage material from the 30's-40's. The felt is just so choice. Smooth like butter and much, much different than any of the hats made today including Optimo and AB. I've been told the vintage ribbon, trolley cord and vented sweatband are major selling points, but overall the hat is amazing, to say the least. If only it was in my size. Oh well...someone elses gain.

Oh, your hat looks too sweet, 3K. Original paperwork too. WHEW!

LOOKED sweet, agent5! It's essentially DOA now, per 3K's post above.

Regards! Michaelson

Well, if this had made a great Raiders hat, I would have wished I had used Peckard's. It can't- a little too much front and back taper and it needed to be taller. But here's what I have observed about this felt. If I put a top bash in and push up in the middle of the bash like the top of my head might, I just get a localized bump at the point of contact. The front and back corners of the bash are not effected. On any of the modern hats I own, any pushing up in the middle pushes up the front or back or both corners of the bash. The Fed in my spinning Avatar have these corners hot glued to fix this problem. This oldstyle felt can give you a deep top bash without a taller hat. ... ot the use of glue. This is maybe why the Raiders hat can appear to have a deep top bash, and not be especially tall looking.

3thoubucks,it's always a pleasure to read your posts,every time you post I learn something new -I have the same problem with my fed,the back pops up when I put it on my head,I don't have a hot glue gun,do you think it would be okay to use epoxy to hold it down?

My take on vintage felt is that it uses only the finest of the finest hairs, while modern hats use corse hair as well. If I look at my Feds, I can see some individual hairs, while you can't see any in the vintage stuff.

Depends on the felt you use and how it get treated afterwards. I have smoothed out Akubras to a degree, where you'd need a magnifying glass to see a single hair and beaver felt can be pounced even finer than that

Perhabs the felt is of the stretchy sort and you could block it a bit bigger...

Regards,

Marc

If it's good, old felt (notice the comma. ), it just might be the stretchy kind. My vintage 1919 AB is, and Steve was joking that at the time he was blocking it for me, it stretched around like a sheet of rubber. Not bad for a felt close to 90+ years old!

Regards! Michaelson

oooh, I should not have looked in this thread... That hat was a beauty!
I am sorry the hat was killed for no good reason.. Great, now I am sounding like an animal rights activist!

My take on vintage felt is that it uses only the finest of the finest hairs, while modern hats use corse hair as well. If I look at my Feds, I can see some individual hairs, while you can't see any in the vintage stuff.

In the process of making felt, the underfur and a small amount of topfur is blown with the result being the heavier topfur falls to the bottom. This is done in steps. If you only did one step, there would still be guard hair in with the underfur, and this would of course end up in the hat. The higher quality felt, new and vintage used several steps of this separation. With that said, I have never seen vintage felt with guard hairs(easily noticed on the inside of the hat, under the liner) so I think they probably did take great care in sorting out the coarser topfur and trash. But, modern high quality felt does not have the topfur in the mix either. This is an indication of quality felt. If the felt does have a few guard hairs present, a few mind you, these can be just pulled out before you make the hat, as they do not felt with the other underfur. Also, pouncing will also remove them, as that is part of the reason felt was pounced. The pouncing pulls them out of the felt.

On any of the modern hats I own, any pushing up in the middle pushes up the front or back or both corners of the bash.

This may very well be a lack of stiffener that causes this. If you take decent felt with no stiffener you do not affect other parts of the hat when you manipulate a particular part. My experience, at any rate. Fedora

I have the same problem with my Federation as well....where can you apply the hot glue to keep the back from popping back up?

A question with regards to top/under fur and quality...
I recently saw a vintage hat that had a "brushed felt" appearance. The felt looked a bit...furry. Is this because top fur was used? If so would it indicate a lower quality felt?

This felt is incredibly thin in the top of the crown. Here's the top of the hat folded. - 1.2 mm thick. So the felt on the top of the crown is only .06 mm thick! That's about a quarter the thicknesss of the felt on top of my modern hats. The brim is 1.5 mm thick. Here's somethig else it does- the back of the top bash is a pointier corner because the felt folds sharper, so thiner felt gives you a little more backtilt. I anticipated that a month ago and put a pointy-er hot glue corner in the back of my Fed Deluxe..You just put about a gorbonzo bean volume of hot glue in the front and back corners of the top bash. I use the low temp setting on a dual temp gun. I can carufully tear it apart and redo it 4 or 5 times in an Federation before I almost make a hole. How do you get felt this thin? If it's pounced this thin, It would probably have to be done by hand and not machine? That would be so labor costly. How close is Raiders era Poet felt to vintage stuff? .... I thought alot about trying to reblock this, but I haven't had much luck with stretching modern hats, so I decided not to try. If you guys are saying this might "stretch" I guess I'll have to try! Thanks. Those Tonaks seemed to stretch a bit.

Well, it's your hat and you can do anything you want with it, but I often wonder when I read a post like this; is it so terrible to have a non-Indy hat?
You could have gotten $200 for that hat on eBay if it was a popular size. That would have been enough to buy, or nearly buy, another Indy hat. Instead you irreversibly alter a rare hat and you don't even achieve your goal. It's lost on me.

I guess I am one of those guys Michaelson warned you about.

How do you get felt this thin?

It is done when the hat was stretched on the mechanical blocker. If you take a smaller body and stretch it with the machine, the part of the hat that stretches the most is the top of the crown. Also, back in the old days this was touted as the "way a hat was supposed to be". Thinnest on the top and gradually getting thicker as the felt moved down to the brim. The truth of the matter was this was how the machines would produce the hats. The marketers just used this as a gimmick to explain why the hat was thinner on the top. All it did, to my mind was to give the hat a spot in which to wear out first.(and the area that first came in contact with rain) For longevity and hard wear, I prefer my own hats to not be much thinner, especially the thinness you have stated in regards to this hat. But, dress hats generally were not intended to be worn for other than status and style. Work hats, on the other hand, were thicker. Fedora

Hemmingway. I had no Idea it was worth more than I paid for it. A good thing, since I'm having a srtong tactile relationship with this hat, since I'm not treating it like an investment, and I'm tearing it apart and sticking my greasy nose and face into it . And today is the day I realized,.. If I sand my Federation THIS thin... maybe I won't NEED any hot glue... Fedora, I don't know how they sort rabbit hairs, but perhaps there were 6 or 10 or 20 degrees of fine-ness, back in the day?

3thoubucks wrote:And today is the day I realized,.. If I sand my Federation THIS thin... maybe I won't NEED any hot glue...

Here we go again.

Fedora, I don't know how they sort rabbit hairs, but perhaps there were 6 or 10 or 20 degrees of fine-ness, back in the day?

Yeah, I am not sure either. Of course you would expect the higher quality hats to use fur that had been sorted several times to get rid of the hair and trash, but it even was more complicated than this. On a rabbit or hare, the best underfur comes from the back. On water animals, the best comes from the belly. Of course, the whole pelt is used so the combination of back and belly fur was used, in different proportions, depending upon the price of the hat. The finest felt was made from the belly fur of the water animal. The finest rabbit was made from the back fur. I think today, this is seldomed used in the manufacture of hats, but I could be wrong. I know of one hatter that advertises belly beaver, but I have yet to see a feltmaker produce these hats. Of course, one could say one had a private felter that makes this sort of felt, but private felters don't exist. Unless, of course having winchester run me some dress bodies in a western color constitutes a private feltmaker. LOL. Some hatters would made great politicians. How can you tell when a politician is lying? Answer. When his mouth is moving. Fedora

If I sand my Federation THIS thin... maybe I won't NEED any hot glue..

It would be worth a try. Thinner felt reacts differently, and this may be what you need. The right amount of stiffener also enters into the equation. Regards, Fedora

Have you heard of O'Farrell of Santa Fe? I have one of his hats and he says he offers an "all belly" beaver hat for them that wants.

Mine is straight up beaver and not the $$$$$$$$$$ belly hat.

They are very nice though.

Have you heard of O'Farrell of Santa Fe? I have one of his hats and he says he offers an "all belly" beaver hat for them that wants.

Another hatter also offers belly beaver. Thing is, if these bodies are coming from South America, it may be belly beaver, and it may not be!!! Certain out of country feltmakers are notorious for not selling hatters what they think they are actually buying!! I had an experience a couple of years ago, and to make a long story short, the old hatter who was trying to set up supplying South American hat bodies to other hatters, backed out of that deal, quickly. All it took was a shipment to arrive to his shop. If he would have been a young hatter with little experience, he would be selling those bodies today. Thanks goodness for the old guys still hanging on. Fedora

Oh NOOOOO!!! Why didn't somebody stop him!

Now you should pray not to run into some 'vintage-extremists'!!!



I think exactly the same way about it as HJ, a unigue hat like this shouldn't be made an Indy-hat. I mean, you wouldn't try to make a new Ferrari out of an old Rolls Royce ... (, would you? )

Okay, I nearly fainted when I saw a Cavanagh Edged hat amputated, but after I recovered from my apoplexy, a thought occured to me:

Do you still have the piece you cut off, and if so, may I have it? I have wanted to dissect a Cavanagh Edge for my research, but didn't actually want to destroy a good vintage hat.

I wish I had thought of this last week! I bet you've thrown it away by now.

Thanks,

Brad