Club Obi Wan

i took steve's advice on water blocking a hat.......ie - toss it in the pot and boil it up like soup. i got it blocked, cut, pounced and flanged. i'm not really loving it for some reason. i'm thinking of making 'hat soup' out of it again......hopefully more of the stiffener will boil away as well.

i blocked it moderately tall so if i do get any shrinkage, i can block it shorter and still keep the brim size.

question: what do you think will happen if you water block it twice? will the felt yield a better quality? will it shrink up like an HJ......oh wait.......nothing shrinks up like an hj

i'm doing this mainly because my first hat pretty much went off perfect.....this one, i can improve on and won't settle for any mistakes.....

I seem to remember somebody saying that denatured alcohol is the best (if not the only) way of removing stiffener.

But, I could be wrong...

-Andy

took steve's advice on water blocking a hat.......ie - toss it in the pot and boil it up like soup. i got it blocked, cut, pounced and flanged. i'm not really loving it for some reason. i'm thinking of making 'hat soup' out of it again......hopefully more of the stiffener will boil away as well.

i blocked it moderately tall so if i do get any shrinkage, i can block it shorter and still keep the brim size.

question: what do you think will happen if you water block it twice? will the felt yield a better quality? will it shrink up like an HJ......oh wait.......nothing shrinks up like an hj

To be clear, don't boil it!! Just dip it in the boiling water until it is saturated, which does not take very long at all.

If you are gonna reblock it, using the water, just dip the crown in, and not the brim. It will stretch as easily as it did the first time.

If you want to remove the stiffener, use denatured alcohol. Soak it a few days in the stuff, and do it outside. This stuff is poison!! That goes for the fumes as well. I use a plastic 5 gallon paint bucket, with sealable lid. You can use the alcohol several times before it starts adding shellac back to the hat. I have found no way to filter, or let the shellac settle down to the bottom. But, I am sure, given enough time, the shellac would settle. If so, you could siphon off the top part, leaving the shellac on the bottom.

Another hatter told me a few years ago to run the bodies through a wash cycle on the washing machine. I tried it, and it took none of the stiffener out of the body. So, that does not seem to work very well. Denatured alcohol is the way to go. Fedora

Fedora wrote: To be clear, don't boil it!! Just dip it in the boiling water until it is saturated, which does not take very long at all.

If you are gonna reblock it, using the water, just dip the crown in, and not the brim. It will stretch as easily as it did the first time.

If you want to remove the stiffener, use denatured alcohol. Soak it a few days in the stuff, and do it outside. This stuff is poison!! That goes for the fumes as well. I use a plastic 5 gallon paint bucket, with sealable lid. You can use the alcohol several times before it starts adding shellac back to the hat. I have found no way to filter, or let the shellac settle down to the bottom. But, I am sure, given enough time, the shellac would settle. If so, you could siphon off the top part, leaving the shellac on the bottom.

Another hatter told me a few years ago to run the bodies through a wash cycle on the washing machine. I tried it, and it took none of the stiffener out of the body. So, that does not seem to work very well. Denatured alcohol is the way to go.

i wish you posted last night steve.......before i made some rabbit stew

i didn't boil it in the pot like you are thinking.......but i did put it in there for more than what you instructed. it was starting to resort back to it's cone shape so i drained it and yanked it out of there. i had some problems putting the brim break back in as i was getting some wrinkling in the crown. i think i got rid of most of it and the ribbon will mask what's left. i flanged it this morning so i had to push the crown through the flange. it was still a little wet so the top actually stretched a tad to give me more dome. i'm interested to see what the center dent will look like in the end now.

i'm kind of on the fence as to finishing this hat.....although i can turn it into a very nice fedora, it won't be as perfect as my other one which is giving me some hesitation. the only thing stopping me from blocking this down onto a TOD block is the fact that i could possible get a nice SOC look out of it if it does come in sub-par