Western Conversion, Illustrated

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.)

Western Conversion Illustrated, Part 2

Spraying down the outside of the crown to make it pliable. Then repeated on the inside of the crown as shown, without wetting the sweatband. Next, used my hand to gently pat moisture from the inside so the crown is throroughly wet all the way through.



I wet down the brim too, with the spray bottle. Then worked on the crown with my hands; here I'm putting in a diamond, which will make it look more straight-sided from the front - counteracting a slight taper that's there.


Here I'm turning up the back edge of the brim, to give it a bit of curl at the edge - I like that because it looks good and helps give the rear some more support to keep its shape. I overbend because it will straighten out partly as it dries.


To get the shape right and symmetrical, I try it on repeatedly and check in the mirror, doing part of the shaping while it's on my head, as shown.


The result after drying.




And on my head.


I wasn't confident of the water repellency of these particular hats, so I sprayed this with 1/2 can of ScotchGurard, many repeated applications, adding $3.50 to the cost of the project. Yes, a total of a half can. No, it doesn't make it stiffer, but it was pretty stiff to start with.

The results: good field hat, 6.4 oz in weight - compared to 5.0 oz for my Akubra Banjo Paterson, 3.6 oz for my Borsalino Como. But a slightly heavier hat can be kind of good in windy weather!

And yes, maybe it isn't a real fedora until you give it a grosgrain ribbon band, but I'm not ditching the horsehair band I made for it before.

Hope this is helpful!

- Bill

That is sweet!!
great job and great photos !
:eusa_clap :eusa_clap :eusa_clap :eusa_clap

Thanks!!

Nice tutorial for those of us who might have a hat that could live again with some new styling.

Regards

C79

Thanks a lot, that's exactly what I was looking for!

-Dave

Really well done photo story.:eusa_clap

Nice tutorial and I like the wood plane idea as well.

Just don't let me get near it with my beltsander.

I just had a western converted to a thin ribbon fedora style by Mike's Custom Hatters in Longview Tx. I showed him the style I wanted, basically a C crown. and as I like a wider brim, left it at 3.5" This was an old hat of my father's that was too small for me. Mike increased the size from 7 1/8 to a 7/14 Long Oval and it now fits perfectally.

His buisness is mostly westerns but his mother told me they are getting more requests and jobs for other styles incuding a lot for reinactors, like top hats, derbys ect . I did see quite a few examples of those on display along with hundreds of nice open crown straws for the summer season.

His turn around on mine, which did include another hat to get the resizing treatment and a new ribbon, along with new liners and sweatbands for both was two weeks.

A nice touch was a gold stamp of my name on the sweatband.

Oops...one of them that disappeared... maybe it could be (somehow) reposted?

Wizzards! seems the pictures are back!