Post New Hats Here!

[Rmccamey]

Brand new to me, early Open Road in Royal DeLuxe. Soft, thin, light, and an easy wear. View attachment 819177 View attachment 819178 View attachment 819179 View attachment 819180

 

[Judgmentalist]

Indy Crusade hat by Advintage. Got this one on eBay - in America, so I didn't have to import one to handle it, which was nice. This was one of the makers I wanted to see.

So, at the moment I have an HJ Indy Poet and this Advintage hat. Apparently the HJ hats are not "real" HJ hats - someone bought them out and is using the HJ name - no relation to the original Indy hats, if I understand the situation correctly.

Advintage is a costume hat shop. Both of my Indy hats are rabbit. For my money the HJ is the nicer of the two. The felt just feels higher quality. Nothing really against the Advintage hat, but in general it just gives me a slightly downgraded vibe. The Advintage is probably my current leading candidate for daily-driver-don't-worry about it to too much hat.

If anybody has an Advintage hat with a different perspective I'd be happy to hear it. It's a nice wearable hat.

The problem with that is the rabbit hats don't seem to handle moderate rain that well. I let my HJ get rained on and it took a little massaging to un-Jed Clampett the brim afterward.

I still want to get a 100% beaver Indy Raiders Turn hat at some point - not sure where. If a Penman pops up I might try that. If I have to make one I'll probably ask Mike Miller to do it.

Advintage Crusade Indy hat in rabbit

 

[Pellie]

Mighty nice. The sweat on my RDOR is disintegrating slowly and a replacement is on the schedule for next summer.

Lol, i first thought you where answering my post, but now i understand

 

[RickP]

Picked this (60s?)Stevens up for next to nothing as a project hat. Wanted to see if I could safely stretch a 7 1/4 RO to a 7 3/8 LO and didn't want to experiment with a good hat. It snapped back into shape nicely with a little steam and some stiffener on the brim. Any Stevens experts with any intel for a beginner?

Before:
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After:
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Ive "rescued" several older Ebay or Goodwill "mutt" hats over the years. 40-50 yr old fur felt is quite workable. Many of them had become a bit snugger than intended. One of the first things I learned about upsizing a hat is that older leather sweatbands often do not survive enlarging on the hat. All too often someone stretches an intact hat, and they can easily rip out the stitching on older leather sweats. Another issue is that a hat stretched that way can pull back again after stretching.... Then you have a damaged leather sweat thats still too snug.

In my humble way of thinking, The proper way to resize a lid is to carefully remove the Leather Sweatband and the ribbon hatband so you can do a good reblocking and resizing of the felt. It may take a few trys to get something to the point that it doesnt shrink back. Then you can address the sweatband for a proper fit. I have NOT had a lot of success stretching leather... it always seems to shrink back some. One the crown is reblocked and resized, Ill either dissassemble the ends of he sweatband and sew in a leather spacer to get the right size, or..... chose to replace with a new properly fit replacement sweatband. ( Im rather fond of soft lambskin for older hats). Dont try to fight the hat. Sweatband and ribbons in my world are finishing items... often not easily resizable without looking abused.

Time spent learning how older hats were built, how to block and shape, how to sew in a sweatband, and how to fit a new ribbon, are skills that will make life much more enjoyable. Pride of accomplishment is a thing. Unless youre looking to restore a rare high end hat and keep it all original, a bit of updating will give you a sharper hat that you can wear frequently and point to with pride of accomplishment.

Enjoy the process and best wishes for your efforts... Go for it and have fun!

 

[BobMitt]

Ive "rescued" several older Ebay or Goodwill "mutt" hats over the years. 40-50 yr old fur felt is quite workable. Many of them had become a bit snugger than intended. One of the first things I learned about upsizing a hat is that older leather sweatbands often do not survive enlarging on the hat. All too often someone stretches an intact hat, and they can easily rip out the stitching on older leather sweats. Another issue is that a hat stretched that way can pull back again after stretching.... Then you have a damaged leather sweat thats still too snug.

In my humble way of thinking, The proper way to resize a lid is to carefully remove the Leather Sweatband and the ribbon hatband so you can do a good reblocking and resizing of the felt. It may take a few trys to get something to the point that it doesnt shrink back. Then you can address the sweatband for a proper fit. I have NOT had a lot of success stretching leather... it always seems to shrink back some. One the crown is reblocked and resized, Ill either dissassemble the ends of he sweatband and sew in a leather spacer to get the right size, or..... chose to replace with a new properly fit replacement sweatband. ( Im rather fond of soft lambskin for older hats). Dont try to fight the hat. Sweatband and ribbons in my world are finishing items... often not easily resizable without looking abused.

Time spent learning how older hats were built, how to block and shape, how to sew in a sweatband, and how to fit a new ribbon, are skills that will make life much more enjoyable. Pride of accomplishment is a thing. Unless youre looking to restore a rare high end hat and keep it all original, a bit of updating will give you a sharper hat that you can wear frequently and point to with pride of accomplishment.

Enjoy the process and best wishes for your efforts... Go for it and have fun!

Thanks a bunch for the advice. I'm definitely in my beginning phase of learning this stuff. My experiment here was to see if going one size from regular oval to long oval would really require stretching or if it's just more a matter of reshaping the oval. At least in this case, it seemed successful without really stretching. The only issue seemed to be warping at the brim break, which I'm still working on fixing.

I've only re-stitched one sweatband so far, and only because the stitching accidentally came out when I was changing the ribbon. That's probably going to be the next skill I'll try to develop.

 

[RickP]

Thanks a bunch for the advice. I'm definitely in my beginning phase of learning this stuff. My experiment here was to see if going one size from regular oval to long oval would really require stretching or if it's just more a matter of reshaping the oval. At least in this case, it seemed successful without really stretching. The only issue seemed to be warping at the brim break, which I'm still working on fixing.

I've only re-stitched one sweatband so far, and only because the stitching accidentally came out when I was changing the ribbon. That's probably going to be the next skill I'll try to develop.

My first couple of sweatbands involved long hours, many finger sticks and blood lol. These days I really enjoy sweatband work... to me is therapeutic. Pour a good adult beverage, fire up a good cigar or pipe, and relax for a couple hours. Good larger John James millinery needles are well worth the cost. Ive found for me, the best accessory for sewing sweatbands is a good pair of compact needle nose pliers.... way less finger stabbing!