Ebay Hats: Victories, Defeats, Gripes & Items of Interest

Great advice, thanks !

 

American Hat Co Velour.
I don't have another hat like this one

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I gave up hope when you opened the bidding at $10. The outcome was inevitable. Congrats, Doc!

 

Thank you!

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Will you curl with the binding on?

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I was watching a pair of tophats, one a folder. I had a rare moment of sanity and unwatched them.

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I was going to offer almost the same opinion as Brent until I scrolled and saw it would be redundant.
The leather looks great. The pin on the bow is interesting. It might help you narrow the age down.

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I wouldn't DARE read it to my wife!

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I like it, Max. Too many velour have a felt self ribbon or a braid in my opinion.

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Is that Sisal?

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I dislike those a lot.

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I’m not sure. It was cheap and looked decently made.


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Sure. I’ve done it before without the tool and I don’t see the binding getting in the way.


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I have a silvery grey velour Sovereign with a matching braid that I've grown fond of. It's the first one I've warmed to though.

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I've watched tools used on YouTube with considerable heat. The maker won't come to mind (might pop into mind at 3AM), but the tool demo was a pencil curl of a western hat. The curling iron got heated on a little single burner gas hotplate type of thing. A second piece was wood. It slipped under the brim to push it around the iron.
The hatter got the edge if the brim pretty wet and the iron sizzled on it and put off a lot of steam.
I wondered if a ribbon binding would take that much heat.

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This one?



It’s the one I ordered. I think I can manage the heat and not damage the binding. I’ve used a steam iron on binding with no ill effects and I don’t plan on heating the stainless steel too hot.


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Fantastic, Max. I like that one a lot. Looks to be an old one.

 

At the peak of my guitar collecting, I had 12 of them around the house. I always had a spare guitar case to hide the newest acquisition. Bedroom closets were great until they became full of guitars.

I'm down to 3 guitars now

My wife doesn't seem to notice a difference between a Stetson or a Bailey hat. So I'm safe with acquiring a couple more hats.

 

I bought one of these. I had a Montecristi that I thought needed a more pronounced curl. Worked great.

I was able to take it from this.


To this.

 

That's the one. I'm anxious to see how it works for you.
That video inspired me to play around with curling myself. I bent some mild steel rod into a curve, then squared off the end of a wooden salad spoon as the pushing tool.
I was able to get a surprisingly even curl my first try, even with an extremely primitive setup. I didn't intend it as any kind of finished product, or even a prototype, but it did enable me to play with the technique. My spoon could curl a little past 90 degrees, but didn't have that half curl that fits around the hot iron, which curling shackles have, and which is also shaped into the wood pushing tool you are waiting for. Without being able to apply that extra pressure downward with my spoon onto the top of the heated rod, the curl that resulted opened back up a little. You should get a considerably better result with that sophisticated set, and I think you'll get the technique down pretty well on your first brim.
I've created shiny spots on grossgrain when using a steam iron to swirl it. Granted, it was cheap polyester ribbon, but that's what led me to ask you about curling with the binding on.
My primitive tools did this, and pretty easy. I had previously removed an overwelt from this brim, then reflanged and ironed it flat with a bag of powdered drywall compound placed on it overnight. I ironed it again, and was going to bind it as a flat brim until I watched that YouTube. I experiment first on total throwaway wool most of the time, but knew I wasn't going to accomplish much with my crude set-up unless I used fur felt.
This is a velour Sovereign I started "converting" for my wife, but she doesn't like the color. To be honest, the color doesn't give me shivers of joy either. I bought that hat in her size, not my own.
Perhaps some old memory of the overwelt made the felt easy to curl evenly. It's possible.

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