Club Obi Wan

Here are a couple of pics of a pristine looking stunt hat. These pics were new to me, so I thought I would post them for those who save this sort of thing.






Absolutely the perfect Raiders fedora to my eyes. For the really anal folks, look at the point on the top 1/3 of the crown where the curve starts to form the dome, or top of the hat. This is where most hats fall short, in trying to copy "the right block" This hat while a stunt hat, looks to be a new one to me. Very pristine in shape, and is identical to the the hat Ford wore prior to becoming distressd, without the bulges most have confused with true reverse taper. Fedora

Absolutely the perfect Raiders fedora to my eyes :!: :!:
I totally agree with you, the top of the hat is very nice and as you said it is the place were many hats fall short. For me this is "THE" Fedora :!:

To me the center dent doesn't look as deep as some of the other Indy hats I've seen, both in the film and on here.....

That hat does look great though. Makes me wish I could reach through the screen and grab it right off of Ford's head.

To me the center dent doesn't look as deep as some of the other Indy hats I've seen, both in the film and on here.....

That hat does look great though. Makes me wish I could reach through the screen and grab it right off of Ford's head.

You know, this always strikes me as funny, and very human. Our perceptions of that hat is an odd thing. Part of this is due to the hat changing throughout the film, shallow front dents, then deep front dents, shallow top dents, and deeper top dents. Then you throw in the bulging distressed felt and we immediately want our hat to have reverse taper, while the orignal had absolutely no reverse taper in the pristine condition of a new Raiders HJ.

I have had customers who wanted a blocked in reverse taper on the back, while the film hat never had it!!! But anything less to them would not be a true Raiders hat. And this brings up something very interesting, at least to me. Individual perceptions of the Raiders fedora, and I think a treatise could actually be writtin on it, as a socialogical phenonoma.

I have said it before, and I will say it again. Overall, we caricature this hat. We see something, and we want it overemphasized, which of course is not accurate. But to a particular eye, it is accurate. Now, this dates back to the day when most of the hats we could get just had too much taper in the hat, the radius on the top that I mentioned prior is not in the right spot, and most of those early hats were just a bit too short. So, we caricatured it(I am as guilty as the next) and started finding hats that were too tall, and we wore them here proudly for years, and few ever commented on the hats just being too darn tall to be accurate. I have lived through all of these perceptions. The latest has been folks who wanted blocked in reverse taper. Well, the original did not have it, but us hatters try to give the customer what they want, while knowing what they are getting us to make is not really an accurate Raiders fedora. So, we try to give them their perceptions.

In the end, the ideal Raiders block shape will give you all of the looks of Indy's hat in the film, but not the SOC look. That look is from sagging and bulging felt, and from a hatter's perspective, it needs to be reblocked to bring back the original shape. Not all felt will bulge like that, and no real high quality felt will ever pull it off to the degree that we see on the film. You can get it to bulge some, but not as much as I see on the SOC hat. And today, if you find a felt that will bulge like that, it will taper into a cone BEFORE you can get it to bulge. A catch 22.

So an ideal Raiders hat could, with some work, give you the Raven hat, the inside and outside Temple hat, and if the right felt was available, it could even give you the SOC hat, once you sat on it and distressed it.

I never bought into the theory that other block shapes were used in the Raiders film, for the Indy hat. Like the one he wore outside the Temple was different than the one he wore inside. All I see is the same block shape when I look. Along the same lines. I don't see the exercises 3M$ has done either, in arriving at the SOC hat. To me, it just looks like a rabbit hat of a particular felt that has been worn and distressed. I have never been able to see what he sees. I mean, I see what he sees, but other more plausible explanations always occurred to me first. I do think the ribbon on the SOC hat was tightened up some, but it may have come loose in filming and someone just pulled it tight and tacked it back into place. I certainly don't think they engineered this hat to look that way. It just happened!!

In the end, if you take a block shape that is close what HJ used to make the Indy hat(I don't buy into the stretcher deal at all) , and if the felt is soft enough, you will get a pristine looking Raiders hat. It is that simple. The trouble before I made my first block, is no one had a block close enough to replicate that look. Optimo had the closest one, but the radius on top was off. And they were getting 450.00 for a mostly rabbit hat that at that time was a bit too much to pay for most of us. Fedora

The hat doesn't look to be turned.
What do you think?

Cheers
HP

I agree with Steve. I dont really respond in this section because I am no expert but it doesent make any sence that they would go to to many extreams for a hat. They had no idea of the popularity of the film at the time, or how popular the hat would be. They also had no idea that some day someone would reverse engineer the hat and nitpick it to death.
The hat was purchased in bulk, blocked, shaped and sent out to the film studio or costume designer or whatever. It was then put together with the other part's of the costume along with Ford's back up hats. Im sure it had to be repaired here and there, distressed for some scenes but for the most part it was a cookie cutter hat, just like the rest. The only thing different were the sizes and the disstressing tecniques.
Like I said tho.....just my opinion, what do I know. I might be wrong...

One major thing that is overlooked by almost everyone is camera placement. This can also create many illusions, including that of a taller crown, just to name one.

Fedora makes a good point about overemphasizing features on the Indy hat. My guilty point is the front crown dents. They look so prominent in the films (to me) that I tend to bash HUGE dents into my hats!

Perhaps recently (um, yesterday) I had an experience that really speaks to the power of perspective when looking at a hat. I was bashing a new hat in the mirrors of my bathroom. It's like a hall of mirrors in there, so I had all these different views at different distances and angles and lighting. I tell ya, not one reflection looked the same, and the hat was totally different when I took it off to see it afterwards! I had camel humps in one mirror, no humps in another, the crease was centered in one, shallow and crooked in another.

I think you get the point. And if you treat a light weight hat the way Ford did (watch the behind-the-scenes stuff), it's very easy to constantly reshape a hat just by using it!

OK, I'm done now. #

Are these screens from the Stunts of Raiders tape or something else?

i noticed that stunt hat a while back and it really reminds me of the "idol grab hat" and it doesnt suprise me if it actually is the mentioned hat.

the screenshots is taken from the DVD bonus disk


Regards

Rio

Look at the second pic. You can really see the shape of that hat. Now, the hat is looking down, and generally this would really show up the straight sides. If the hat is kicked back, you get the illusion that the hat is taper more than it actually is. Its the angle. Back to the second pic. To me that is the perfect illustration of a new HJ, the Raiders HJ. Now, the hat is not mushroomed. In fact, if you really study it, there is just a tiny tiny bit of taper in the crown. Yet the top crease is not in really deep to cause this. My point is, we tend to caricature the amount of taper in the hat. While it was more stoved piped than most hats we generally see in the fedora style, it is not a perfect straight sided hat. We caricature it to be. IMHO. In the end we want a perfectly stove piped hat because we think his is like that. But, the more I have looked at his hats, the more I can see that it was not a square hat, that is, as square as the old PBs used to be. A cube.

Now enter the SOC hat. This is where we draw many of our ideals from. That hat started out as the one you see in the above pics. But, not only was it distressed, I can see where it has shunk in particular areas, while the bulging of the felt, the so called reverse taper hides this shrinkage, and makes the hat look almost mushroomed. It just looks like it has been through Hades. The brim break is not clean anymore( a no no in hatting) the ribbon is pushed up, the brim droops beautifully, the ribbon is so tight that it aids in the bulging of that really lack of body felt, while compressing the sweatband area enough to cause that famous crease on the right side of the hat that runs under the ribbon. Some have sewed one like it in their own hat to replicate this nuance. But, I have taken really floppy felt and tightened up the ribbon so this crease just happens naturally. The felt is gonna pucker up somewhere and since the front of the hat was already creased in, this is where the pucker would naturally occur. We will never know why that ribbon was so tight, unlike the other two film hats that had the ribbon too loose, either from installation, or the felt just shrunk that much so the ribbon loosened up. But, it almost looks to me like the SOC ribbon was pulled tight to make the hat fit better. Or perhaps it was just put on tight when it came loose, and this happy accident gives us much to ponder over. Just some more of my two cents on the subject. Fedora

Fedora is a born hatter. It's too bad he was born so late...if he were the age is is now in the 1930s or the 1940s, he would have been the king of the hatters. His passion is boundless. What is it he USED to do for a living anyway? It must seem a lifetime ago.

It's always a pleasure to read his well-considered comments about our favorite hat. Anyone who's had his hands into so many different hats over the years has my vote of confidence.

I really hope that Fedora gets the contract for the Indy-4 hats...because their on-screen appearance will be the best of all the films.

One comment about the Adventurebilt...one of the many reasons it's my favorite hat is the way the brim can be shaped so easily and it stays that way . I can't do that with any of my other hats, including my vintage fedoras. There's just something about the combined magic of pure beaver felt and Fedora's masterly touch.

Steve,
Here's a behind the scenes pic you may dig.

This pic is from the film. The crown looks a little taller here.

That second picture looks squished. Look at the vertical jaggy lines/artifacts in the hats. And the front to back dimension of that hat is quite a bit less than the first picture. (his head is slightly turned in the second one, but not that much)

Here's a couple more pics of other stunt hats along with a few more of the Nazi Spy fedora.

Vic Armstrong fedora.


Martin Grace fedora. Look at that teardrop, wouldya?


Terry Leonard fedora. Obviously a bit tight for the requires scenes.


Here's a pic of both hats in the sunlight.

Great pics Agent!! I immediately saved them to my Raiders hat file!! Thanks. Fedora

Great pics, I saved them too, never seen them before

I'm going to have to get a memory stick for all the Indy pics I have in my 'puter..........it's brain is full!!!

Burn them to CD. It's cheaper.