Any cowboy hat experts here?
- Thread starter Imagedude
- Start date
Something along the lines of this Daniel "I have a competition in me" Plainview hat?
I don't know the name of this style but its a good looking hat.
I have a hat that started out one way and then eventually ended up another, that is the way with felt hats, they have a life of there own.
let's stipulate i'm not an expert...
when you go to have cowboy hat made for you the shop will have styles that are determined by crown height, brim width, felt type (wool, beaver....) and felt quality. the more X's the more $'s.
the hat person will ask what you want and using heat and steam shape the crown and brim to suit you.
new hats start out looking like a ten gallon hat (like stetson's boss of the plains...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1800s_Boss_of_the_plains_.jpg).
if you buy a hat online or a production hat you get what you get, though you can reshape it to some degree more or less.
just be aware that good felt will hold its shape better than inexpensive felt and good felt hats can make you cry when it's time to pay for them.
in my closet is a 7X stetson that cost around 350usd back in the day. heckuva hat though.
much like the levis versus wrangler hoohah, if you start looking at quality headgear you'll have to decide stetson, resistol, bailey or some other brand. the australians have some darn nice hats as well.
the hats i tend to wear are fedoras that cost much less.
you have an adventure ahead of you. have fun.
when you go to have cowboy hat made for you the shop will have styles that are determined by crown height, brim width, felt type (wool, beaver....) and felt quality. the more X's the more $'s.
the hat person will ask what you want and using heat and steam shape the crown and brim to suit you.
new hats start out looking like a ten gallon hat (like stetson's boss of the plains...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1800s_Boss_of_the_plains_.jpg).
if you buy a hat online or a production hat you get what you get, though you can reshape it to some degree more or less.
just be aware that good felt will hold its shape better than inexpensive felt and good felt hats can make you cry when it's time to pay for them.
in my closet is a 7X stetson that cost around 350usd back in the day. heckuva hat though.
much like the levis versus wrangler hoohah, if you start looking at quality headgear you'll have to decide stetson, resistol, bailey or some other brand. the australians have some darn nice hats as well.
the hats i tend to wear are fedoras that cost much less.
you have an adventure ahead of you. have fun.
Ignore the XXXs. It's only martketing hype. Supposedly it denotes how much pure wool felt is used compared to filler but in reality there is NO standard; each manufacturer chooses his own definition for this. And they're mostly cardboard or paper filler now anyway.
Pretty much. What he's describing is an old cavalry hat such as was popular in the movies from the 1940s and 1950s where the soldiers portrayed had turned up the front brim to be able to see the horizon better. Not sure why anyone would want to turn up the back though.
You can shape (and reshape over and over) any quality felt hat any way you like. The cheaper (cheaper quality, not neccessarily cheaper priced ones) are stiffer because they use more fillers in the felt.
Beaver felt is best, followed by rabbit felt, and after that by wool felt.
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The type of hat you're describing doesn't have a specific name, movie hats are just that though....plenty of theories why some chose to shape their brims like this, in the cavalry it was supposed to be less likely to blow off when riding fast & easier to use a rifle, cowboys may have prefered the upturned front as you didn't knock your hat off everytime you swang a lasso......there is also some contraversy about the hats seen in the old photos in that many were temporarily rolled up so that their faces could be seen ( cameras wern't back then what they are today).& so arn't an accurate dipiction of how they were actually worn.
Providing the felt is firm enough you can steam shape raw edged brims .any way you choose.
comical..
cool...
Incredible.
Providing the felt is firm enough you can steam shape raw edged brims .any way you choose.
comical..
cool...
Incredible.
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I don't know where you get your hats santaman but I'd change supplier if I was you
.......unless you like party & fancy dress hats that is 
I'm a cowboy hat expert. Well, relative to most people in the UK at least, probably I am. Well, I've got one.
It's a real one, a Stetson. Ted Wytovicz, a sales rep for one of our customers in the USA, took me to Sheppler's in Kansas City, Kansas one weekend because he said I had to have one. I have no idea why he suddenly decided that I needed a hat. This was in 1980 or thereabouts, and I thought he was crazy, but we went anyway and I did buy one.
When I went to Sheppler's I didn't know much about cowboys and their hats, just what I'd seen on the telly. Boy was I in for a shock.
When we went in through the door it was like going back in time. There were people milling about everywhere dressed like Clint Eastwood in Pale Rider. The six-guns they were wearing were genuine firearms and the gear that they were wearing, including all manner of hats, frankly made me goggle in disbelief. I'd never been anywhere where they take stuff so seriously. I felt a bit uncomfortable.
We went to the hat store, and the guy in an apron at the counter asked me what he could do for me today. I looked around the store, and pointed to one of the hats that happened to be walking by. "One like that", I said.
The guy in the apron wasn't very impressed. Maybe it was the English accent, maybe it was because I wasn't packing a Colt, maybe it was the Italian Stripe suit that I was wearing. He wasn't having any of that "like that" stuff and he launched into his patter.
He explained that a hat wasn't just a hat. Ohhhhh, no. It's an expression of the character of the wearer. The style of the hat has come from the owner's psyche and radiate his aura -- or something like that. I forget exactly, it was a long time ago and I tuned out fairly early on to look at some gal in a frilly waistcoat. By the time I tuned back in again he was explaining about what he called the 'rainbow' that you put into the hat to stop the rain running down your neck and how to pinch it just right when you put it on so that the wind doesn't blow it away when you're on your horse. He didn't seem to consider the possibility that an English bloke wearing a tailored three-piece suit might not have a horse.
Then he took down a 'blank' from the shelves behind him. Something was happening now. He was going to do something. So this was interesting to me, and I paid attention. The blank was made of beaver felt. It looked to my uneducated eyes like the hat that 'Hoss' used to wear in 'Bonanza'. Unfortunately Dan Blocker died forty years ago, so those of you who in 2012 are younger than fifty might need a little help:
http://ponderosascenery.homestead.com/files/castbios/hoss.html
Of course the blank hat probably wasn't anything like the hat that Hoss wore, but what would I know.
We're now getting towards the bit where he asks me for a hundred dollars, and having interviewed me to expose my deepest inner self, the salesman -- er, sorry, the guy in the apron -- put the blank on a kind of steaming thing and started to shape the garment to my personality, pulling and bending the brim with practiced precision, and folding the crown into a shape just so, and generally trying to make it look like it was going to be worth what I was going to have to pay for it. He got me to try it on, and after seeing me wearing it he decided it needed just a little more of this and a little less of that, and this went on for a good fifteen minutes until finally he was satisfied. Then he asked me for a hundred dollars.
I wasn't convinced by any of the spiel, but I think it was worth it for the whole experience, which I'll never forget as long as I live.
Because I had no other way to carry it, I wore that hat more or less everywhere from then to the end of the business trip. Mostly this involved flying around on aeroplanes and giving talks to our customer's sales and engineering people in about fifty US states. The hat got a lot of comments. Until I explained, which I seemed to have to do a lot, people mostly seemed to think I was a bit strange.
There are photos of me wearing it somewhere on the wife's computer, I'll post a link when I come across one.
But it's just an ordinary looking cowboy hat, or at least it looks like that to me.
It's a real one, a Stetson. Ted Wytovicz, a sales rep for one of our customers in the USA, took me to Sheppler's in Kansas City, Kansas one weekend because he said I had to have one. I have no idea why he suddenly decided that I needed a hat. This was in 1980 or thereabouts, and I thought he was crazy, but we went anyway and I did buy one.
When I went to Sheppler's I didn't know much about cowboys and their hats, just what I'd seen on the telly. Boy was I in for a shock.
When we went in through the door it was like going back in time. There were people milling about everywhere dressed like Clint Eastwood in Pale Rider. The six-guns they were wearing were genuine firearms and the gear that they were wearing, including all manner of hats, frankly made me goggle in disbelief. I'd never been anywhere where they take stuff so seriously. I felt a bit uncomfortable.
We went to the hat store, and the guy in an apron at the counter asked me what he could do for me today. I looked around the store, and pointed to one of the hats that happened to be walking by. "One like that", I said.
The guy in the apron wasn't very impressed. Maybe it was the English accent, maybe it was because I wasn't packing a Colt, maybe it was the Italian Stripe suit that I was wearing. He wasn't having any of that "like that" stuff and he launched into his patter.
He explained that a hat wasn't just a hat. Ohhhhh, no. It's an expression of the character of the wearer. The style of the hat has come from the owner's psyche and radiate his aura -- or something like that. I forget exactly, it was a long time ago and I tuned out fairly early on to look at some gal in a frilly waistcoat. By the time I tuned back in again he was explaining about what he called the 'rainbow' that you put into the hat to stop the rain running down your neck and how to pinch it just right when you put it on so that the wind doesn't blow it away when you're on your horse. He didn't seem to consider the possibility that an English bloke wearing a tailored three-piece suit might not have a horse.
Then he took down a 'blank' from the shelves behind him. Something was happening now. He was going to do something. So this was interesting to me, and I paid attention. The blank was made of beaver felt. It looked to my uneducated eyes like the hat that 'Hoss' used to wear in 'Bonanza'. Unfortunately Dan Blocker died forty years ago, so those of you who in 2012 are younger than fifty might need a little help:
http://ponderosascenery.homestead.com/files/castbios/hoss.html
Of course the blank hat probably wasn't anything like the hat that Hoss wore, but what would I know.
We're now getting towards the bit where he asks me for a hundred dollars, and having interviewed me to expose my deepest inner self, the salesman -- er, sorry, the guy in the apron -- put the blank on a kind of steaming thing and started to shape the garment to my personality, pulling and bending the brim with practiced precision, and folding the crown into a shape just so, and generally trying to make it look like it was going to be worth what I was going to have to pay for it. He got me to try it on, and after seeing me wearing it he decided it needed just a little more of this and a little less of that, and this went on for a good fifteen minutes until finally he was satisfied. Then he asked me for a hundred dollars.
I wasn't convinced by any of the spiel, but I think it was worth it for the whole experience, which I'll never forget as long as I live.
Because I had no other way to carry it, I wore that hat more or less everywhere from then to the end of the business trip. Mostly this involved flying around on aeroplanes and giving talks to our customer's sales and engineering people in about fifty US states. The hat got a lot of comments. Until I explained, which I seemed to have to do a lot, people mostly seemed to think I was a bit strange.
There are photos of me wearing it somewhere on the wife's computer, I'll post a link when I come across one.
But it's just an ordinary looking cowboy hat, or at least it looks like that to me.
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I don't know where you get your hats santaman but I'd change supplier if I was you
Oddly those were the last Stetsons I got. And yes I have changed; Akubra or Bailey now (but Bailey may be following Stetson's lead by now for all I know)
I quite enjoyed that.
me too, thanks for the chuckle ged, that's brightened my day up no end. now, where's these pictures?
You were indeed in luck. Back in the 1980s Shepler's was a great western store. However they've gone downhill now (at least their catalog sales have, we don't have an actual Shepler's near here) They sell off the shelf hats (mainly Stetsons and mainly "seconds" (rejects from the production line)
I assume they still have a salesman or techn ician in the actual stores who will reshape hats though. Most (if not all) western stores do. They'll usually reshape your older hats for free.
Is it called amigos style? This would keep you dry instead of a tent, like your thinking.
This style is called the Sombrero (Mexican/Spanish for hat)
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