Hat blocks/shapers/home made?...

[Hat and Rehat]

You’re replying to a post that is over 9 years old...don’t expect a reply.

How did you set the oval? I can see how the circumference wouldn’t be that difficult, but the shape/oval sounds tougher to get right. I’ve seen lathes with duplicator capabilities for making furniture legs etc. CNC machines would be the way to go, but a huge investment that isn’t practical if you’re only making blocks for yourself.

If you’re looking at using your blocks to make hats that others will buy, most customers will want to know the profile of the block. The #52 block is a perennial favorite, but others are needed if you’re going for a different look. I think you might end up money ahead if you bought the commercially made blocks of the profile you’re after (or keep watching the used/vintage market).

You might also see if there is a hatter who will let you do some sort of abbreviated apprenticeship?


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I knew it was an old post. I was just trying to add to the database in case it was suggested to someone that they ought to google their querry. ;-)

This might be a more complete answer to what you asked me about the oval.
The oval on the block base was pretty easy. I had my oval on paper, then glued it to the bottom of my cube of laminated wood, removing wood until the oval remained. I tried to stay perpendicular to the bottom, creating an oval cylinder, and also being perpendicular to the top. Then I bisected my paper oval on the bottom, front to rear (see the attatched pictures), followed by a series of lines perpendicular to that center line. This block was my third one and I was getting confident (cocky?), so there are 5 lines. My first two had one every 1/2".
Using a square I could now transfer all of my lines fom the bottom to the top (6 on this block) and mage a grid, in theory, aligned with the one on the bottom.
After that I could take A, B and B, C measurements, per my chickenscratch on tbe bottom of the block, with AB = BC, and cary my oval from the bottom to the top, even as it tapered up smaller. The shaping between the top and bottom ovals was all by eye, but the grid makes it pretty easy to sight down and see variations. It made it even easier than I expected. Picturing the symmetry of the entire oval is difficult, but pictiring the cross hatched part compared to the checketed part isnt very difficult at all. Running my palm on the block as I sanded identified high ridges or flat points, and I also had two hats with the crown open to check my progress against.
This block is, presntly, a little more symmetrical front to back than my others, but that will change a little as I break the sides into curves, because one end will start to curve a little lower than the other, and have a wider radius. The black hat in my picture does that on the back, but i have others where the hatter chose to use that as the front of their hat.
You really can get a pretty good block this way.

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[deadlyhandsome]

I knew it was an old post. I was just trying to add to the database in case it was suggested to someone that they ought to google their querry. ;-)

This might be a more complete answer to what you asked me about the oval.
The oval on the block base was pretty easy. I had my oval on paper, then glued it to the bottom of my cube of laminated wood, removing wood until the oval remained. I tried to stay perpendicular to the bottom, creating an oval cylinder, and also being perpendicular to the top. Then I bisected my paper oval on the bottom, front to rear (see the attatched pictures), followed by a series of lines perpendicular to that center line. This block was my third one and I was getting confident (cocky?), so there are 5 lines. My first two had one every 1/2".
Using a square I could now transfer all of my lines fom the bottom to the top (6 on this block) and mage a grid, in theory, aligned with the one on the bottom.
After that I could take A, B and B, C measurements, per my chickenscratch on tbe bottom of the block, with AB = BC, and cary my oval from the bottom to the top, even as it tapered up smaller. The shaping between the top and bottom ovals was all by eye, but the grid makes it pretty easy to sight down and see variations. It made it even easier than I expected. Picturing the symmetry of the entire oval is difficult, but pictiring the cross hatched part compared to the checketed part isnt very difficult at all. Running my palm on the block as I sanded identified high ridges or flat points, and I also had two hats with the crown open to check my progress against.
This block is, presntly, a little more symmetrical front to back than my others, but that will change a little as I break the sides into curves, because one end will start to curve a little lower than the other, and have a wider radius. The black hat in my picture does that on the back, but i have others where the hatter chose to use that as the front of their hat.
You really can get a pretty good block this way.

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Wow! I’m m always impressed by those who have skills that I don’t and never will have. The top of your block looks very abrupt without much of a transition; the 52 is fairly straight sided, but it does round off at the crown.

It’s an accomplishment in any case. Are you making your own brim flanges too?


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[Hat and Rehat]

Wow! I’m m always impressed by those who have skills that I don’t and never will have. The top of your block looks very abrupt without much of a transition; the 52 is fairly straight sided, but it does round off at the crown.

It’s an accomplishment in any case. Are you making your own brim flanges too?


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I made one so far, but it was for a small block to make hats for my grandchildren, so not very sophisticated. I bought a bamboo laminate serving bowl and cut a hole in it.
;-)

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[Hat and Rehat]

Wow! I’m m always impressed by those who have skills that I don’t and never will have. The top of your block looks very abrupt without much of a transition; the 52 is fairly straight sided, but it does round off at the crown.

It’s an accomplishment in any case. Are you making your own brim flanges too?


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The top of the three blocks I've been making this way are incomplete. My first picture of them was in the background of What Hat are You Wearing Today? I had my straw with the green plastic visor in the brim on, and it was an outside shot, last Sunday; beautiful day. Monday it started raining, and late Wednesday and yesterday it was spitting snow. I have a small shop in my basement, and use it for cutting, assembling, clamping, and some sanding, but not too much. Belt sanding would coat everything in the house with dust and I might have to start sleeping in the shop.
I actually started these the week before, after hours at a property I'm working on for my employers, in the garage. I used a small fold out scaffold for a bench to clamp them to, but it's only a couple of feet tall, great for installing crown moulding, or cutting in paint between a wall and ceiling, but murder on my lower back for that sanding operation. I considered loading up a better portable work table, but decided to wait on the weather instead. This has been an unusually long spell of rain and overcast for Denver. The sun shines here more than 350 days a year.

Your comments did get me thinking. Making my own blocks almost forces me to also make my own flanges, and band blocks. Had I thought it through earlier, I would have first purchased a commercialy produced flange, using it to guide my choices on oval and taper for the blocks. A flange costs less than a block, which is a consideration, but one which would prevent my home made blocks from becoming obsolete as I acquire commercialy produced equipment as money and time allow. I probably should have said at the beginning that Ive seen these as a stopgap measure that would be replaced over time.
Thanks for your questions though, because they added much needed clarity to my thinking. I actually think the hats would be somewhat forgiving of blocks not quite like what they were first stretched on. Hatters use old equipment that has cracked, chipped, etc., all the time. If you have a crack up a block, believe me, it has changed shape. Marc at Lumberjocks, who uses the modern, digital routers, and uses that fact in marketing, says first, before talking up his equipment, regarding banding blocks, how so many hatters use flawed ones. Epetinger (SP?), writing in 1910, thought it reasonable for a hatter to start out with as little as two blocks, one round top oval and one flat. Need one a little bigger? Stretch a different felt over your block, cut the brim off, then block over that. He had a name for it, which escapes me at the moment, but indicates that it must have been a common practice. He says you can reuse the ______ for years.
My point being that the felt, including finished hats, is probably forgiving of a little bit of 'slop' in equipment tolerances. However, combining different equipment components does demand a strong degree of standardization. A woman who produces 16th century European hats, mainly for theatre, says on her website that she started with blocks she made or contracted. Later, purchasing equipment on the market, she found them incompatible with the comercial products.
So it behooves any aspiring hatter hoping to start with blocks made themself to make sure they match what they would purchase from the established industry. Either that, or be content with the start up equipment becoming obsolete.

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[Hat and Rehat]

A side note on this, interesting to consider, is the question of standards and measures in general. We're used to an inch meaning an inch at your house and my house. This has only been true for less than 250 years. As late as the mid 18th century you could have a pint in one town, travel 50 miles downriver, order a pint, and it might be bigger or smaller. The same with a gallon, a barell, an ounce, or any unit of measure.
Standard measures are largely a product of the Scientific age, and most promoted in France, the source of metric standards, where they even tried to impose a 10 day week. Have you thought about why many of the prominent figures in the founding of the USA began as surveyors? Its because surveying was a relatively new invention, and standardized surveying a cutting edge scientific advancement, precisely what a man of letters would study in higher education.
It wasn't that long ago when estates didn't have property lines. Your property extended as far as your fields, or as the villages of the peasants who were attached to it. Surveying redefined property, and actually disposessed many peasants and serfs, contributing to emigration to the 'New World.'
In surveying, there was a decided struggle between two systems, one decimal and the other earlier and less scientific, the chain. In the US, the decimal system never took hold, though for at least the last 50 years they've been telling students it would within a decade. The birth of standard measures and of America in many ways go hand in hand. With statehood, and even before, came surveyors, which explains our city grids and North/South streets, not something found in the Old World, or in the oldest part of our own early cites. It's a fascinating study.
Pertaining to hats, it would be very intersting to see when and how standard measures became normalized. I suggest it came with mass production, and not all at once. When people wore wigs, everybody's head was round as a pumpkin (which was probably used somewhere, sometime as a hatblock). After that, every hatter's bocks were self made, or by the village woodworker, and there were I'm sure as many systems of size as there were villages. Expanding trade, mass production, and largely, I suspect, mail order created the forces for standards, although standardization was itself, for its own sake, almost an obsession 200 years ago.

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[Hat and Rehat]

This is almost complete. It will stand next to my steamer, below a sign offering cleaning and shaping for $12 or $15 ( I haven't decided yet on a pricing schedule). The idea is to attract an audiece.

I will most likely work it more in the future, but can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good while spring slips away from me.

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[Hat and Rehat]

I suggest suiting up before you power sand fiberglass.

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[Hat and Rehat]

I didn't get a lot farthet on the three wood stretching blocks I was working on last week, prior to my sister's sudden illness. The most advanced one is utop the boxes of my new Dobbs. It's gaining good proportion, but the curves have to be brought lower until there's less flat top.
I did work. On some other blocks though. I call them my shaping block, to use in my booth for shaping finished hats i have worked on two and completed one. It's for smaller hats, 7 1/4 down to 6 3\4. Below that it would get awfully tight. I stained it and applied two coats of marine varnish. The top is still a little flat, but I think that will help with the bigger hats, 7 1/4 and 7 1/8. I made it by inverting an unusual, glue up, wooden peice from a thrift store. It looked like some kind of urn.
Behind it, on the tile surrounding my little bar sink, is the one for bigger lids. It's made of teak wood, which is very hard. That was some kind of wooden flower pot.
My eyes are getting heavy, so I'm done for the night.

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[Hat and Rehat]

I didn't get a lot farthet on the three wood stretching blocks I was working on last week, prior to my sister's sudden illness. The most advanced one is utop the boxes of my new Dobbs. It's gaining good proportion, but the curves have to be brought lower until there's less flat top.
I did work. On some other blocks though. I call them my shaping block, to use in my booth for shaping finished hats i have worked on two and completed one. It's for smaller hats, 7 1/4 down to 6 3\4. Below that it would get awfully tight. I stained it and applied two coats of marine varnish. The top is still a little flat, but I think that will help with the bigger hats, 7 1/4 and 7 1/8. I made it by inverting an unusual, glue up, wooden peice from a thrift store. It looked like some kind of urn.
Behind it, on the tile surrounding my little bar sink, is the one for bigger lids. It's made of teak wood, which is very hard. That was some kind of wooden flower pot.
My eyes are getting heavy, so I'm done for the night.

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Tapatalk stopped on me again.

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