Now for something completely different

March 15, 201511 yr

I had an interesting turn of events yesterday that ended up with me a very different type of woodworking project which may also open up some opportunities.

I have a few hats that belonged to my Grandfather who passed in 1959. My sister came across an old hat box that had been from my Aunt's stuff when she passed away a few years back. Inside the box were 5 hats ranging from the 1930's to the 1950's and a couple of them were salvageable. Since I am a "Hat Guy" as I wear hats most of the time to keep my bald head either warm or not getting sunburned depending on the weather. One of the hats is a late 1940's Panama hat and I wanted to get it reworked and replace the original ribbon as it was toast. I took the Panama and 2 other felt fedoras to a Men's Vintage Store and they do some hat restoration and did ok with the felt hats but the Panama.....well....not so good as straw is an entirely different animal. So after doing some researching online and getting connected to a site for "Hat Aficionados" and asking a bunch of questions, I was referred to a guy who makes and restores Panama Hats and he happens to live about 30-40 minutes away from me. So I contacted him and sent him a couple of photos and we set up a meeting for yesterday and my wife and I drove over to his place and we sat and chatted with him for about 90 minutes. So he will be rebuilding my hat and fixing it up for me with a new sheep leather sweatband and silk ribbon.

So during the conversation I mentioned that I do some woodworking and his eyebrows went up and he said "Hmmmm....". I know that sound as when I hear that sound it means that they want me to make or repair something for them, and that is exactly what it was. So we discussed some things about his equipment and has some pieces that need repaired as well as some specialty items that need to be made. All of these out of wood. First of all he had a piece that looks like a wooden toilet seat, but it is used to shape and flatten different sized brims on hats. The piece mounts into a special stand and then he works the brim using various tools. Being that these are very unique to specific types of hats, these are not something that you can just whip up. All of these pieces are old and are passed along from generation to generation of hat makers as you just can't buy these off of Amazon.com. So he said that if I would fix it for him he would deduct the cost from his price for restoring the hat. So that sounded good to me.

This old piece split in half and it was not a difficult thing for me to glue it back together and put in a couple of 3" pocket screws to reinforce it. After a bit of very light sanding, it is good to go. Along with this he asked if I would be able to make some pieces out of Poplar that he uses as "Hat Sizers" of the custom hats he makes for people. When he has a customer that he makes multiple hats for he makes a paper template of the diameter of his head and then has an 1.5" to 2" thick piece of Poplar with a 5 degree bevel and a hole in the middle that he puts on the inside of the hat at the sweat band so that he can size the hat perfectly for the customer. He has another woodworker that he has used for a few years that is out of state and he is not very reliable of time. He also has some other items he wants me to look at as well as making up a special shelf for storing his Brim Flatteners with dividers for the different sizes. So if this is something that I could do locally then it would work out for him and I could get a bit of extra $$, so we will see what happens.

Here is a link to his site and there are a few photos of his shop and the tools he uses.

http://www.gomezhatcompany.com/about.html

So here is the Brim Flattener. It took me about an hour and half last night to do the glue up and then another hour and a half today to put in the pocket screws and sand the joints smooth.