hi I'm Eric Watson at Watson's hat shop
in historical Cave Creek Arizona here at
Watson's hat shop we make fine tailored
custom hats built to any style today I'm
going to show you how a felt hat is
restored the first thing we do as you
can see we have a customer come in they
always bring hats in like this that are
pretty pretty dirty and have been worn
this actually came from a rancher so
this is actual working hat what we're
going to do is the first step is we're
going to clean this hat get the dirt out
of it just restore the the finish of the
hat and then from there we're actually
going to remove the leather the old
leather sweat band on the inside you can
see here that it's tore you can just see
like it's just kind of dry rotted the
thread and whatnot so we're actually
going to remove that the next thing that
we'll do is we're actually going to
reblock the Hat by reblocking the Hat we
actually use an open Crown hat block and
by doing that we stick it in here like
this we would heat this all up warm
followed up and we also would then take
this and use what's called a foot to
liquor and we get this all pushed down
exactly level on the board and we just
press into that and get a perfect break
in between the brim and the crown of the
hat from there we use what's called a
banding block the banding block is
actually what sets the band area between
the crown and the brim of the Hat
there's actually a hat here that we're
working on and you can see that this is
an open crown block and based on the
height of the crown and the style of the
Hat is dependent on the exact shape of
the open chrome that that we would block
the hat into so if you actually see here
this perfect break where the foot to
looker was that is actually where the
bay
block comes into play with a foot to
looker from there we want to make sure
that's perfectly just lined up and you
got a perfect break there and we
actually are going to take a leather
sweat band and we have a really high
grade of goat high leather sweat band we
line that up in the back of the Hat we
let put a mark there and then we cut it
to exact dimension of the Hat that we're
working on and from there we we stitch
the back part of leather sweat band
together by hand
we then have a 1930s singer sewing
machine that we would actually put this
into the sewing machine line the this
hat up when it's all ready and clean and
put the new leather sweat band into the
Hat from there we'll set the shape into
the Hat that's desired by using steam
and heat and pressure and we also have
such tools they actually set the creases
in the top of the Hat and some of this
is done by hand as well then from there
we'll put a final finish on the Hat and
pretty much that's how you restore a
fell hat so I'm Eric Watson and come on
down to Watson's hat shop and we'll help
you out have a good day
Oh