Club Obi Wan

A SMALLER SWEATBAND! ..That is, your size sweatband in a bigger hat.
Bought this vintage Lock & Co fedora on ebay. No size tag, the guy said it had a 22 1/2 inch inner circumference, but it was like 23 inches. My head is 22 1/8 inches. (I thought it had a 2 1/2 inch brim but it was only 2 3/16.)
I took out the sweatband, put on a cinched up ribbon and put in a size 57 Federation4 sweatband. The open crown shape was just typical like a Fed 4, what have you.
Getting beyond the original sweatband is probably why this hasn't been done before.
The old brim break is clearly out there about a 1/4 inch on the front of the brim on the Raiders hat, about 3/16 on the rear of the brim. This would have required a smaller replacement sweatband. In the "Shoot them both" scene, the sweatband isn't squirming out onto the brim, it's against Ford's forehead. The massive ribbon cinching and smaler swetband moved up into the crown in the front and rear, gives you an automatic "dimensional brim cut" It gives you that deep grove down the front dent that we'd rather not deal with.
I've been checking ebay everyday for 10 years for an HJ or Lock & Co that would have that special block. I have made my own very vertical blocks to reproduce the Raiders hat. It seems that the Raiders hat was just a typical block, all cinched up with a SMALLER SWEATBAND!
Here's the size 57 sweatband. A 58 would have fit better, but I get to leave a gap where the grove down the front bash is. My forehead is more vertical than Ford's, and would tend to push out the grove out.

So to anyone thinking of buying a Fed4, Borsalino Alessandra, Miller- old standard block hats, order one or two or three or four sizes too big, shorten the sweat and cinch the ribbon. I think that's the primary Raiders mod ... good luck.

Nice job. That color is sweet.

So this is beaver right?

Would this have been hit with mercury or is it too new for that?

I like the color too. It's very red. But it's kinda dirty. I get the impression it was worn by a camper. It seems to have soot? all over in the front of the hat. Those white marks are sweat and hat stiffener. Anyway, I don't think anyone has worn it since 1950 something. The hat has a lot of stiffener at the brim break. I've never handled a beaver or mercury hat, to my knowledge, this hat may be both, but I wouldn't know how to tell. It's very thin felt, and rigid- it won't be bulging over the top of the ribbon like the Raiders felt did. It's an old hat, the liner is sewn in. There was a paper tag, with perforated edges, like a triple wide postage stamp, under the sweatband. I should post a picture. It's very nice. Anyway, it says "Shape", then stamped with a rubber stamp '"174" Then "Colour", rubber stamped "LOCK DK GREY" ...what? I think it might be an 'In" joke. Then "No." -"4143" , and, There's a big box with 7 3/8 stamped in it. I don't know if this is English size or U.S. as this hat was sold through Brooks Brothers, but it must be British, the hat is so big.. or, since the color is incorrect, maybe the size is too.
The brim is too narrow to be a Raiders hat. ... REALLY? ... http://www.crisisoninfinitemidlives.com ... aiders.jpg



There's an old report that Harrison Ford bought a hat at Lock & Co when he was in town to make Raiders. Of course, the Screenused hat has an HJ sweatband in it, but since the original sweat band had to be replaced....perhaps by the costumer, with a bunch of stunt double and back up HJ fedoras at hand...

This hat came from Eastern Los Angeles.

I cracked the Raiders hat.

Here's the size 57 unworn Akubra Federation 4 I took the sweatband out of and put in the big Lock here.


This isn't just ribbon cinching.- Say I had a hat one size too big. I could make it fit perfect by replacing the sweat band with one a size smaller, installed further up into the crown. The crown tapers on an open crown mostly front and back but on the sides too. The smaller sweat would slide up into the crown a bit and stop by itself. Sew it in right there and the hat is just your size now. So that's what I'm doing also, in the front and back. I assume the cinching does most of the downsizing, but moving the sweatband up into the crown front and back does too.

Here's the first new Raiders hat since 1980, I'd argue, pretty much.
It's a Miller "Harrison", the first Indy hat I ever bought was this one, I think it used to be called the "Indy". Comes open crown. I love the color, it's called "coffee", but dark brown is an option. I thought this new Miller was still a little too small and tapered so I bought a Borsalino Alessandria because I had one of those before and thought the crown had less taper than my first Miller. The block was the same though. These hats, including the Akubra Federation and Bushman, and Stetson Open Road, all seem to have the same block. -It would be great if the Raiders hat had this block.
It's 2 1/2 sizes too big for me. It makes a fine Raiders hat, but too tight, I have to leave the sweat band out. I have another Miller on the way, 3 1/2 sizes too big, which I hope is the sweet spot. I'll have that for ya in a few weeks.


All this cinching makes the crown taller and the top crease deeper and steeper. I - like - it - a - lot. The brim curls more, and "snaps" down in back.
It sat for a day and the crown started to swell out, behind the front bash with the cinching created channel. I tried to push it in, then I grabbed the hat by the front crease with my right hand, and put my left hand inside the hat and started pinching the front bash channel tighter. It occurred to me I might be doing what Ford was doing in the Waco plane in Hawaii. (He was pinching something, and it wasn't the top crease.
Here's kind of a grey area- It's not hard for me to believe the Raiders felt handled ribbon cinching, but I had to put a big rubber band at the new brim break and wet the felt in the ribbon area, with a simple loop of ribbon to the size I wanted, to kind of shrink it, and this Miller felt loves to shrink. My advice is to go very slow. - Another issue with the Miller is the sweat band stitching overlaps in back, and this made a 1/8 inch hole, with another inch that's really chewed up. Also, the Miller ribbon is too wide, I used a Federation ribbon. I probably should have gone with a Fed or Fed Deluxe, but I gotta have this golden brown color.
I also gave this hat a telescope bash at 3 1/2 inches above the original brim break, and 1 inch above that. I feel this is SA and lets the hat do a lot of the stuff the Raiders hat does.

Got the 3 1/2 sizes too big Miller "Harrison", couldn't wrestle her down enough, so I'm going to guess the hat you need is around 2 1/2 to 3 sizes too big.

If you are thinking about trying this, hold on a bit. I just got a very floppy early SAB HJ Poet with the lighter color ribbbon. 3 1/2 sizes too big like that last Miller, maybe I'll get this one to work. It has a 6 inch crown and a lot of taper, so I'm going to make a standard block based on an unworn open crown Fed 4. Fedora said he was able to reblock these hats. I came across this quote from him last week-

I swear, the Cairo hats looks to have the ribbon tightened up, thus causing the reverse taper. Fedora

(Jan. 12, 2003)

Here it is- The 3 1/2 sizes too big SAB HJ Poet. I really feel this is a fully evolved Raiders hat . I thought this floppy felt would cinch down, but I had to fold the sweat to make it wearable. With the 2 hats above, I shrank the base. This hat I reblocked 360 stovepipe, which is more valid I believe. I'm a size 57 1/2, it's still size 61 and if I removed the sweat and ribbon, it would slide right on the size 61 block I made. https://youtu.be/kTSq-k1GhkU

Looks good, but I doubt the sweat band was folded on the hero
Raiders fedora. I think that's just how that hat rolled. I have a vintage 50s Stetson whippet. That thing has more character in its current state than even the raiders fedora had going for it. But it's just how the hat was treated by previous owners before it found its way to my head.
Course I could always be wrong.

Jeremiah wrote:Looks good, but I doubt the sweat band was folded on the hero
Raiders fedora. I think that's just how that hat rolled. I have a vintage 50s Stetson whippet. That thing has more character in its current state than even the raiders fedora had going for it. But it's just how the hat was treated by previous owners before it found its way to my head.
Course I could always be wrong.

Yeah, I'm not sure they put that much thought into it. I think it was just highly abused during production on top of the "turn"

The profile looks spot-on, but the front and back don't look quite right. Too much rounding at the top/sides...

I certainly like the way 3thou thinks. But I have to agree that I dont think that much thought was put into the hat. I have an old HJ Poet in rabbit from the 80s and I've perspired so much in it over the years (I bought 10 years ago ) that the sweatband has shrunk up so much that it's caused some reverse taper especially in the back where it mushrooms out almost one quarter inch over the ribbon. I realize the hats in the film were more or less relatively new but I'm sure the folks in the costume department knew of methods to expedite the aging/shrinking process. I think if you had enough time to devote to it, you could repeatedly soak a sweatband then use a hair dryer on high heat on it over and over again to achieve a similar result.