Woodfluter
Practically Family
- Messages
- 784
- Location
- Georgia
Since there were recent questions about converting a western hat to a fedora shape, and as I was doing that anyway, I figured I'd post a step by step illustrated description of how I did it.
First we have the victim...Resistol "4X Beaver". Fairly tall, semi-straight crown, and I'd trimmed the brim down earlier to 3-14". But too heavy and the brim still too wide for most uses, so it sat unused for 15 years. Still, a good long-oval fit.
I measured the brim from the sweatband and marked with pencil: 2-3/4" fore and aft, 2-1/2" at sides. Then added more marks about every 2-3", proportionally scaled, in between. Next, the deadly work of sharp shears!
The hat, trimmed. Cat rest is optional. Note that I was not terribly fussy with the neatness of shearing. Made sure I was slightly outside my marks at all times, as seen in the second picture with pencil mark. Slight jaggedness of no concern at this point.
This is the tiny plane, and the same in use. If the blade is very sharp, and it is only advanced a little bit, it will smooth out and shape the brim cleanly and not too fast. Eyeballing this carefully, and minding the pencil marks, it goes reasonably fast and you can get a perfectly uniform edge.
There are places where I had to plane more than in others. Some overturned fluff raised as a result. Trimmed off with small, sharp scissors.
The edge can be cleaned up more, and stiffened a bit, by lightly and quickly passing it through the flame of a lighter. Very quickly...only want to burn off tiny bits of fluff.
Final smoothing can be done with a few passes of a mill file. This shows how even the edge is at completion.
(To be continued in next post.)
First we have the victim...Resistol "4X Beaver". Fairly tall, semi-straight crown, and I'd trimmed the brim down earlier to 3-14". But too heavy and the brim still too wide for most uses, so it sat unused for 15 years. Still, a good long-oval fit.
I measured the brim from the sweatband and marked with pencil: 2-3/4" fore and aft, 2-1/2" at sides. Then added more marks about every 2-3", proportionally scaled, in between. Next, the deadly work of sharp shears!
The hat, trimmed. Cat rest is optional. Note that I was not terribly fussy with the neatness of shearing. Made sure I was slightly outside my marks at all times, as seen in the second picture with pencil mark. Slight jaggedness of no concern at this point.
This is the tiny plane, and the same in use. If the blade is very sharp, and it is only advanced a little bit, it will smooth out and shape the brim cleanly and not too fast. Eyeballing this carefully, and minding the pencil marks, it goes reasonably fast and you can get a perfectly uniform edge.
There are places where I had to plane more than in others. Some overturned fluff raised as a result. Trimmed off with small, sharp scissors.
The edge can be cleaned up more, and stiffened a bit, by lightly and quickly passing it through the flame of a lighter. Very quickly...only want to burn off tiny bits of fluff.
Final smoothing can be done with a few passes of a mill file. This shows how even the edge is at completion.
(To be continued in next post.)
