Club Obi Wan

I just re-blocked my faithful old Raiders fedora and thought it turned out pretty good. Have a look!









You can never tell how well a hat turned out until you see it on your noggin so here it is.


Weston

NICE job! It looks great on you, and like it's been on countless adventures with you. I like it!

Excelent work. Some reverse tapper on the block?

There is no reverse taper on the block Odo, it just turns out that way once it is creased. It didn't used to do that; it's taken many years and many re-blocks to get it to look like this.

Weston

Looks great.....Is your had a Fed?

Bazza wrote:Looks great.....Is your had a Fed?

No, it's a decades old Beaverbrand. It started out as a cowboy hat that was so ugly no one would buy it.

Weston

It's hats like this that are the real deal.

Very impressive. Take care of it. Take it from me, when a hat is as good a friend to yuo as that one is, it hurts alot to have to retire it.

Holy smokes, that's a nice one after the rebash. Looks better than some of the Indy hats themselves in some scenes.

That is a real winner! It goes to show what a little mileage can do for a hat.

Wow! I hope my Keppler Beaver Brand looks this good in a couple of years. Beautiful hat, Weston. Beautiful hat.

Dave

The hat looks outstanding, Weston.

That's also a nice "Harrison kicking back on the Cairo set between shots" pose you've got going there in the last pic.


---Tim

When you say you re-blocked it, exactly what do you do to the hat?

I have to emphasize the above question; I've NO idea what that process is like.

But WOW. From an old cowboy hat?! That's darn impressive, if'n I do say so myself.

alphared6, all I did was get it good and wet, using steam to further soften the felt and pull it down over the block. I did not remove the sweat or ribbon, though it is about time I changed the ribbon.

You won't believe what I used.



I take the hat off while its still just a bit damp and work the crown a bit by hand so that the crown ends up with a shallow dome over the top and smoothly transitions to straight sides. I let it finish drying and, well, you've seen what I end up with.

I've been meaning to make a wooden block, but this has served so well for the last few years that I keep using it instead. Thank you Rubbermaid!

Weston

So... you wet your hat down and pull it down over the top of this Rubbermaid thing?????

alphared6 wrote:So... you wet your hat down and pull it down over the top of this Rubbermaid thing?????

Yep. Kind of take some of the mystique out of it, doesn't it?

Weston

I'm in agreement with what everybody here is saying, that hat is just beautiful and easily one of the nicest looking I've seen (and with A LOT of character)...
Weston, did you take any shots before you did the re-block? I don't mean back in its Cowboy Days - although that would be pretty cool, too - but I mean JUST before the re-block.
I think that as much as were ALL suckers for the AFTER pictures, a lot of us here really enjoy the BEFORE pics as well.
Post 'em if ya got 'em!
And NICE work, man...
Mitch

Keep in mind that if this was a western hat, the felt is a lot thicker than what is used on a typical Indy hat. A thinner felt will react differently, though it's not to say you couldn't get the same results. I had an old Beaver Blend cowboy hat I found at a thrift shop which converted nicely to an Indy styled hat, but that particular hat has long since been passed on.

Pardon my confusion, but you found a Rubbermaid tub of some sort that is approximately the same diameter as your Mellon, right? You wet the hat thoroughly and pulled it down over the tub. I assume it a tight fit, eh? Is this tub oval? None of my fedoras is "round." They are all oval in shape.
I ask because I have an old Akubra that has been through the mill and needs a good re-blocking, so I really want to understand how you achieved such a fine look.

Mitch, here's a pic that shows why the need for a re-block. Even after this it didn't look too bad, but it was time.



alphared6, the container I've been using is completely round. I'm out of time right now, but later on today I'll provide some more information on how I did this, including the dimensions of the container.

Weston

I almost hate to admit it, but 3ThouBucks might have something going with his Winston360 theory - Judging by your rubbermaid block.

Before I saw the block I was thinking - Oh, how very RAIDERS looking. And sure enough!

Thank you all!

I had mixed feelings about showing the "block". It's kind of like ending the tour of a newly remodled home with the dingy, unfinished basement.
Even so, I thought you guys should know what I used, and if it can help some of you get the same results, then good!

alphared6, here is the block/tub Rubbermaid thingy in comparison to the final shape of the crown.

http://img258.imageshack.us/my.php?image=1008165hi0.jpg

So you can see, even though it starts of perfectly round, the hat will conform to your head. One advantage to putting a round oval hat on a regular oval head is the cool way it warps the brim. My head shape is regular oval, between sizes 7 1/4 and 7 1/8. My inspiration this time was this thread:
http://indygear.com/cow/viewtopic.php?t=32886
About half way down in the comments, Steve indicated that a re-block by him may not be likely in my lifetime , so I decided I'd do it myself (again!).

binkmeisterRick, you may be right about the felt reacting differently on a thinner hat. This one has softend quite a bit over the years, but is fairly thick felt. I do think this would work just fine on a PB, or Federation, something with a good 6" tall crown. I tried it on my old Stetsons, and the problem wasn't that it wouldn't hold the shape, but that there wasn't enough crown to work with. My hat started off 6" tall, and very tapered, and ended up about 5 1/2" tall and untapered. You loose some crown height when you stretch the dome out.

The block I indend to make will likely be made of ash or oak, and will have a slightly rounded top, and mabey not a true stovepipe shape. Until then, this works for me!

Weston

binkmeisterRick wrote:Keep in mind that if this was a western hat, the felt is a lot thicker than what is used on a typical Indy hat. A thinner felt will react differently, though it's not to say you couldn't get the same results. I had an old Beaver Blend cowboy hat I found at a thrift shop which converted nicely to an Indy styled hat, but that particular hat has long since been passed on.

Hey Bink,

I still have that hat you're talking about..........

And to everyone else, I've also used a plastic mixing tub to reblock one of my Wyatt Erp hats. Worked great!

Z

zeus! I'm glad it's still in good hands! How's it holding up after all this time? I remember how nice a hat that was.

What a nice shape that hat has. Looks good.

binkmeisterRick wrote:zeus! I'm glad it's still in good hands! How's it holding up after all this time? I remember how nice a hat that was.

Like the day I got it.

I've only worn it a few times and will probably sell it here on the forums at some point as a nice starter hat.

My Federation Standard gets all the wearing these days......

Hmmm...
zeus36, is it too early for me to ask you what size it is?
Mitch

Mitch LaRue wrote:Hmmm...
zeus36, is it too early for me to ask you what size it is?
Mitch

Ditto.

Wow!
alphared6 and I sure are chompin' at the bit aren't we?

M

Mitch LaRue wrote:Wow!
alphared6 and I sure are chompin' at the bit aren't we?

M

Mitch, I've never been one to let moss grow between my toes.

Cheers!
(I just hope we didn't just scare off zeus36...)
Mitch

I can tell you what size it is, because I sold it to him! Heck, I should consider making an offer to buy it back! Though it was taken with a poor, early digital camera at the time, here's an old picture of the hat in question. The Beaver Blend is on the left and an earlier Akubra Federation is on the right.



The Beaver Blend originally had an even wider bound brim with a very thin ribbon and had a porkpie bash. As for it's size... around 7 1/4.

Well, whether or not it ever goes up for sale, that sure is one nice lookin' lid.

Mitch

Weston:
I followed your lead with my old fedora. The results were not as dramatic as those you achieved but it did improve the overall looks of my hat. I got this fedora on eBay some time ago. Just visible on the inside crown can be read "Heritage Collection" so I deduce it to be an Akurba. I had to do some serious cleaning, replace the sweat band and the ribbon (with a Todd's ribbon). I did all this stitch work myself. The attempt at blocking was moderately affective, as you can see.
This is currently my favorite hat because it's so soft and I prefer the color over the Akubra Adventurer. I have a Fed IV on order I should have it early this week.

I'm glad that helped alphared6! I like the work you did on that ribbon too; I may have to get one from Todd soon.

Those are some sharp looking fedoras Bink!

Weston

Mitch LaRue wrote:Cheers!
(I just hope we didn't just scare off zeus36...)
Mitch

Hey Mitch,

I'm still around, but not as much as I used to be....

The hat is 7 1/8 and what this forum decided to call a Pecan color.

I'll PM you the before and after pics. I used to have them posted online with Village photos (along with my Avatar) but that site went out of business.....
And it looks like the old post about the conversion of the hat is gone as well.
Z

Hey zeus!
Thank you for the offer to send me the Before & After pictures.

But - as much as I'd still love to see the pics, I should be straightforward and honest with you:
Once bink said he thought the hat was about a 7&1/4 and now you've said that it's a 7&1/8... I'm concerned that it wouldn't fit my noggin'.
I measure 23 & 1/8 inches (59 cm) so I'm pretty sure that puts me in the 7 & 3/8 range (unless you guys both meant U.K. or Aussie Sizing - in which case I think I MIGHT be a 7 & 1/4.)

So, thanks for asking... sincerely.
But I don't know if my head would be right for that hat.

PLEASE feel free to post those B & A pics though, if you'd like to... I'm sure I'm not alone in wanting to see them!
(And don't forget alphared6... I'm pretty sure he was intersted in your hat, too.)

All the Best,
Mitch

(I also just sent you this message in e-mail form as well.)

Mitch, since it was originally my hat, I'd be the one with the before and after pics, but I can't find any that showed what it looked like when I originally got it and before it received its transformation.

As for it's size, I said 7 1/4 because I typically wear around that size, though truth be told, there are some 7 1/8 hats which fit me. My guess is that I'm really somewhere between the two sizes, probably more of a 7 3/16. Since zeus now has the hat, if he says the size tag reads 7 1/8, then that's what size it is.

Gotcha!
Thanks for clarifying, bink!
Mitch

Okay, after doing some digging around, I did manage to find a picture of it before Fedora reworked it so long ago. Keep in mind, before this, it had a bound brim and a short porkpie bash to it. The original bash looked a bit like this, but shorter:



...but with a bider bound brim that curled up on the sides a bit like Woody from Toy Story. I trimmed the brim just a little past the bound edge, popped out the bash and shaped it like this:



And then after I sent it to Fedora (pre Adventurebilt days) he trimmed the brim more, swapped the ribbon, and sent it back looking like this:



That help?

I'm in AWE of Steve's work yet again (you'd think I'd be getting USED to it by now)!

That is one SPECTACULAR transformation!

Thanks for posting those, binkmeisterRick.
Mitch

Come to think of it, that hat was a pre-3Thou porkpie/Indy experiment!

I was just reviewing the above posts and THAT thought just hit me too, bink! (Then, when I got to the bottom of this thread... sure enough, there you were beating me to the punch with that statement!)

Anyway, it certainly looks like it was an experiment that ended successfully! (Now if I could only discover some experimental method to shrink my head by a quarter-inch so I could wear that handsome hat!)


Ah well...

Mitch

Mitch LaRue wrote:Now if I could only discover some experimental method to shrink my head by a quarter-inch so I could wear that handsome hat

This worked for me!

Thanks, Cairo...

I'll... uhh...
I'll get back to you on that...

Ummm...
Thanks, though...



Mitch

Weston's fedora needs its own fanclub or something, its that awesome.