Hello,
As per my last post displaying the felt hats I had made for myself, I'll be showing how I went about making them. I'm by no means a professional hat maker, just simply a guy who wanted to make his own headwear. Feel free to follow along and ask questions if you decide to build a hat for yourself!
Starting out I bought a hat body/capeline or two from Millinery Warehouse, which has both pure beaver and rabbit fur blanks which are ideal hat materials. If you'd prefer something cheaper to practice with, there's plenty of wool hat blanks on Etsy. I started out with a 180g and a 210g weight blanks, the higher the number the thicker the blank. The 210g is quite heavy, pretty similar to thinner cardboard in its workability. I found the 180g to be a good weight, still a little on the heavy side, but not impossible to work with. If you'd prefer a lighter hat that's significantly easier to shape and size, I'd recommend 160g or below.
After I ordered my hat blanks, I got started on constructing the necessary tools I'd need for making my hats. The most important tool you need in making hats is the hat block, which is what stretches the hat to a specific size or shape. You can either order a custom hat block online at the exact hat size you'd need, or you could try your hand at making one for yourself, in which I did the latter. Luckily my father has a wood lathe, so I had the opportunity to turn one for myself. My skill in turning is limited, so I was unable to turn an oval to perfectly match the shape of my head, so I settled for a slightly undersized "cylinder" shape, if that makes sense. Due to this, extra sizing will be needed later on which I'll discuss. Here is a photo of the "hat block" I made. It's 5 1/2" tall, with a circumference of 22", which is about an inch or so smaller than the circumference of my head. Of course, this is how I did it, and there's plently of other ways to make a hat block. I've heard of people carving out oval shapes close to their size from Styrofoam, and others have made moulds of their heads and made plaster hat blocks that are true in size. In the end of the day, it's what works for you that matters.
After I made the hat block, I constructed these two "platforms" that go around the base of the block. I just used some scrap wood I found in the garage, it doesn't have to be anything fancy or expensive. These platforms give the hat brim something to rest on while flattening it later on, or else it's much more difficult to flatten the brim. I can add pieces of wood below them to make the platforms sit higher or lower depending how far away the brim is. Technically you could utilize this "reduce" the height of the hat block, therefore being able to adjust the height of the crown, but it proves to be difficult with the hat blanks I use.
The final tool that I built for this project is a brim width marker. It's literally just a crescent-like shape with a hole-filled dowel attached to it, it took all of 5 minutes to make. It's used to go around the hat blank and mark an even brim all the way around that you can go and cut with a pair of fabric scissors, or a knife if you'd prefer. More will be posted following this.
As per my last post displaying the felt hats I had made for myself, I'll be showing how I went about making them. I'm by no means a professional hat maker, just simply a guy who wanted to make his own headwear. Feel free to follow along and ask questions if you decide to build a hat for yourself!
Starting out I bought a hat body/capeline or two from Millinery Warehouse, which has both pure beaver and rabbit fur blanks which are ideal hat materials. If you'd prefer something cheaper to practice with, there's plenty of wool hat blanks on Etsy. I started out with a 180g and a 210g weight blanks, the higher the number the thicker the blank. The 210g is quite heavy, pretty similar to thinner cardboard in its workability. I found the 180g to be a good weight, still a little on the heavy side, but not impossible to work with. If you'd prefer a lighter hat that's significantly easier to shape and size, I'd recommend 160g or below.
After I ordered my hat blanks, I got started on constructing the necessary tools I'd need for making my hats. The most important tool you need in making hats is the hat block, which is what stretches the hat to a specific size or shape. You can either order a custom hat block online at the exact hat size you'd need, or you could try your hand at making one for yourself, in which I did the latter. Luckily my father has a wood lathe, so I had the opportunity to turn one for myself. My skill in turning is limited, so I was unable to turn an oval to perfectly match the shape of my head, so I settled for a slightly undersized "cylinder" shape, if that makes sense. Due to this, extra sizing will be needed later on which I'll discuss. Here is a photo of the "hat block" I made. It's 5 1/2" tall, with a circumference of 22", which is about an inch or so smaller than the circumference of my head. Of course, this is how I did it, and there's plently of other ways to make a hat block. I've heard of people carving out oval shapes close to their size from Styrofoam, and others have made moulds of their heads and made plaster hat blocks that are true in size. In the end of the day, it's what works for you that matters.
After I made the hat block, I constructed these two "platforms" that go around the base of the block. I just used some scrap wood I found in the garage, it doesn't have to be anything fancy or expensive. These platforms give the hat brim something to rest on while flattening it later on, or else it's much more difficult to flatten the brim. I can add pieces of wood below them to make the platforms sit higher or lower depending how far away the brim is. Technically you could utilize this "reduce" the height of the hat block, therefore being able to adjust the height of the crown, but it proves to be difficult with the hat blanks I use.
The final tool that I built for this project is a brim width marker. It's literally just a crescent-like shape with a hole-filled dowel attached to it, it took all of 5 minutes to make. It's used to go around the hat blank and mark an even brim all the way around that you can go and cut with a pair of fabric scissors, or a knife if you'd prefer. More will be posted following this.
