This is a story of one hat, and a lot of hats. The hat of this story required a long path of hats before it could even begin.
I had a particular shape I could see in my soul. I have named the shape a Softened Slope, because it alludes to a Montana Slope that has been worn in the rain across a few seasons of drives. A hatter friend of mine, Jared Coffelt of Flint Hat and Boot in Lubbock TX, prefers it’s descriptive: Soggy Gus, but I refuse to name my shape after a character in a television show. The Montana Slope nomiker predates the invention of television, let alone Lonesome Dove.
The hat shape I knew would be one with my inmost being requires more taper to the crown than standard blocks provide, so I began by building my own block. I started with a tracing of my head, which at sweatband level is slightly elongated than average, and larger on the left side than right (which is apparently average). I drew outlines of the taper I assumed the block should have, front to rear and side to side, then lined it off by the width of the poplar boards I intended to use.
(Apparently poplar is traditional for hat blocks because it is easy to carve when it is newly cut but ages to hard and dent resistant, and doesn’t rot as long as it doesn’t get wet.)
Then I drew each level…
Cut them out and stacked them up…
Glued them together and filed/sanded them smooth…
Then painted it, because I am that way.
I also made a brim form, to press the brim to for a bit of droop beyond what comes from the store.
Jared allowed me use of his shop to finish my hat project. Clockwise from top is a steel grey 50/50 beaver/rabbit Jared made on my block to ensure I liked the shape before I invested a 1000mile road trip into the project, then the crown block and brim form you’ve seen, then an undyed 100% beaver (mostly shaped), and an undyed mink/beaver (not fully shaped), these foreground two being the hats I made with Jared’s tools and guidance.
Felt hats can be shaped by steam heat and gentle massaging into place. It is a wonderfully calming artform of slow and gentle manipulation while they move gradually into place with decreasing springback, relaxing into your guidance and vision. Straw hats however, are what this story is about. Straws require a full soak in water to become flexible, at which point they drape like oiled leather. They require hard molds of the entire hat’s intended shape to dry on.
To get my signature Softened Slope into a summer straw version, first I tried carving wood.…
And painted it.
Because, as you know, I am that way.
I kept that mold because it looks good, and have shaped some straws with it, but it wasn’t the Softened Slope of my Flint felts. I started trying taking casts of my felts with plaster, then cloth strips dipped in epoxy…