Club Obi Wan

There are some fairly new vendors that have some nice looking hats! Some try so hard to accentuate certain features that you almost get a bit of a caricature of the Indy hat, but overall they are really solid looking.

There is no real question here, but I am wondering how durable they are. Some of them look amazing, but how will they look after three years of good use getting wet and dried a few times? Not knocking vendors, just musing, and looking forward to the next few years when we can see how they are holding up

That’s great news....but who are they?

Considering they're using the same materials as the longer existing vendors, such as Winchester and Portuguese felts, those features won't change.

What WILL change is how well their components are sewn together, and the quality of the ribbon and sweatbands over the long haul.

Other than that, it's about an apples to apples comparison anymore.

Regards! Michaelson

IndianaJustin wrote:That’s great news....but who are they?

Exactly, who are the vendors?

While the felts come from a limited number of places, the individual hatter DOES play a role. The recently retired Art Fawcett, for example, had a few tricks up his sleeve to work through some of the excessive stiffeners that Winchester uses.

SkauneJohan wrote:

IndianaJustin wrote:That’s great news....but who are they?

Exactly, who are the vendors?

Please, we’re begging now.

I am really sorry to disappoint people who area thinking there are new hats. You have to remember I am old

I have not been here for a long time and have not really looked too much at hats since Steve made my first pre-Adventurebilt hat. I think we are looking at 2004? Steve was the first person who made a hat for me that really held up. A dress felt that held its shape. I beat the #### at of that hat over the years. I cannot tell you how many times it has been soaked and dried and it looks great. I still hear a lot of complements about the hat from total strangers.

I was thinking about getting a backup hat, and have messed with making my own hats. Once of them came our really good, I think - considering I really don't know what I am doing. I typically buy an old vintage cowboy hat because it is easy to get the crown height and brim length. But the elusive look and feel of the dress felt is missing. Hats that feel soft do not hold their shape without stiffener.

So I started to look at other hat manufacturers to see that is going on. So "New" just means hats that are new to me since all of this went down.

jlee562 wrote:While the felts come from a limited number of places, the individual hatter DOES play a role. The recently retired Art Fawcett, for example, had a few tricks up his sleeve to work through some of the excessive stiffeners that Winchester uses.

This is very true! The same felt can have different properties, so I do not really find it apples and apples. Unless the apples area picked from the same tree, then maybe? There are always tricks to keeping the hats the way you want. I am going on 15 years with the same hat and it has seen tons of hiking and any weather you can imagine. I was just musing about where the offerings of the past 10 years have been holding up. Again, sorry about the "new vendor" comment. I did not mean to make people think there are brand new offerings.

Actually, Rick, compared to the folks you and I are used to, there ARE several 'brand new vendors' out there who are making hats.

I'm sticking to what I said about 'apples to apples', as the materials ARE all the same. That said, though, if you're debating the handling of the felts, well, it IS going to be different from maker to maker.

For example, Steve Delk had a way of 'killing' the felt in order to stop shrinkage that few use or know about. It was learned from another old time hat maker, and is a 'secret' they share amongst themselves.....or at least that's what they claim.

I understand Penman is supposed to use the same technique, which he learned from Steve. Marc Kitter does the same thing (when he's working).

That's why we've been wearing their hats for years in downpours and snow storms and they don't look like witches hats.

I don't know if those 'new vendors' do it too, but I haven't heard ANYONE complain about custom hats shrinking for years, regardless of maker, so maybe that's a problem of the past that we used to have to deal with 20 years ago.

Agreed, Art Fawcett was an excellent hat maker, but even HIS stuff shrank. I have a beautiful fedora he made me several years ago that I can't get on now due to shrinkage, though I have Adventurebilts of the same age I still wear with no problem at all as they HAVEN'T shrunk.

All this rambling is just going back to the comment I made that all the 'new guys' (comparatively speaking) are making excellent products that are getting rave reviews. They just haven't been around long enough to make comparisons to the 'old guys' we know.

Regards! Michaelson

p.s. I think the reason no one is mentioning names is the line above that said

Some try so hard to accentuate certain features that you almost get a bit of a caricature of the Indy hat....

A lot of folks take exception to having their product referred to as a 'caricature' of anything, so in order to not hurt anyone's feelings or ruffle any feathers, I not going to post any names myself.

All of these are on the newer side to me, although that does not mean they are new and no one has ever heard of them.

http://www.steele-jones.com.ar/en/sombreros.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

https://www.advintage.de/index.php/2018 ... 8/?lang=en" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

https://www.facebook.com/Screencapped-H ... 438054722/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

https://www.hufvud.com/fedoras" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Andrea Tognarelli Vintage Fedoras (on Facebook)

http://garrisonhatters.com/Raiders.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Excellent list.

Thanks for the quote (tognarelli vintage fedoras)

Since “new” can be relative, maybe adding the year they opened for hat business might help.