This diagram illustrates the top of the crown of an unbashed hat, viewed from above. (1) Normal. The turned hat (2) will have reverse taper in it's crown when viewed from the front. (3) A turned hat will fit snug front to back, and the front pinch will angle back.
Source of back left crown bulge.
Will turning the hat give everyone the Raiders look? I think so. If not every feature, then probably most. I have a long narrow head. Indygear fan "Gorak" says he has a round head, and got a great Raiders look by turning his hat a full 90 degrees. ( See his brown and grey 90 degree Alessandrias here -- ( click on "Alessan..") http://photos.yahoo.com/chahenabro ) -- I think there's a different turn for every head. The tightness of the hat effects the amount of turn required. I had to turn a loose fitting Indiana Miller 3 1/2 inches to get the Raiders look.
I'd like to assemble a Gallery of gearheads turned hats on this page. If you have pictures of your rotated hat, pm me at Indygear.
Here's how I go about turning a hat.------ Have some reference pictures from Raiders ready. Using two mirrors, turn the front of the hat towards your right ear untill the elevated flat ridge appears in the brim behind your right eye. This ridge can be moved further back towards your ear with more turning, but it should be kept forward. Check the dip in the front of the brim over the right eye, and check the look of the flip behind your left ear (remember, it needs to be creased later). When things look right, wear the hat while the felt gets used to the distortion. Check and adjust the hat now and then. After 10 hours, bash the front and crown, but don't pinch the front tightly. Wear and adjust the hat for a few weeks before tightly pinching the front.
When my hat was fairly new, the left side brim would stay either not flipped up enough or flipped up too much, and not wanting to stay there for long.. I had to fold and slightly crease the brim to get the film look. (A wire may have been used to controll the left brim as well)
Indiana Jones hat. Raiders of the Lost Ark fedora.
Was there a pece of WIRE or something else in or on the brim? This is an unpopular theory, and I don't feel stongly that it's fact myself. I think it's possible, because my brim got this dome above my left ear when I turned my hat (b/w pic below), and it put a blip in the edge of the brim. I use a wire to make the shape adjustable. I pushed a needle into the edge of my brim and again in the middle of the brim, to make one tunnel, then inserted a wire from a twist tie with the paper burned off it. Warning: This has probably weakend the felt- I'm affraid the brim will tear here someday. Very difficult- I had to make two attempts- the first tunnel (unused) is still visible in the felt. - The wire works for me, I won't be removing it.
2 Hats from "Seabiscuit" turned both ways by mistake (you can see that the front pinches are off-center) . But Jeff Bridge's brown hat is actually pinched and bashed off center, basicly, a Raiders hat. Steven Speilberg's company DreamWorks SKG made the film, which could mean he knows what's up with the Raiders turn... Will it be back in Indy 4 .... ?
In the above pic, the light spot above Indy's ear is convex ( the wire? is there), the dark spots slightly concave, but not as concave as they would be without the wire.
Was the ribbon tightened? Maybe, maybe not.
.......... It has been said that the true Raiders hat doesn't show up until Indy swings over the pit. The hat tends to look tapered and the brim unremarkable in the dark scenes when Indy first enters the the Peruvian cave. I found a couple of significant frames in the tarantula scene where the felt is bunched near the front pinch. This might indicate that the ribbon was overtightened. (or was it just the sloppy ribbon stitch above?)
Later in the cave, the hat was turned, the front pinch repositioned, but the bunch was left behind in the middle of the right font dent
Ford was in the habbit of pinching his front pinch down into the ribbon. ( A short, one inch sweatband helped?) When the tighened ribbon (?) was installed, the front pinch actually was able to fold over and form a channel, giving you the tarantula hat.
Then the front pinch was rolled to the left, giving you the turned hat with the channel in the middle of the right front dent.
Here's my tightened ribbon, tightened mostly at the top- note the angle of the ribbs where the ribbon meets the bow. The ribbon pokes out beneth the bow now, and you can see that it does on Indy's hat as well.
The bottom of the ribbon must be tightened a little also, preserving the channel right down to the brim. You can see that it affected the brim when it was fresh, and later in Cairo. (Could it just be the pleat caused by a ribbon stitch?)
Trimming the sweatband narrower
M.K. went to England and met Vic Armstrong, head stuntman for Raiders, and examined Vic's Herbert Johnson Raiders stunt hat and noticed that it has a narrow sweatband. So I guess Ford's hat may have had a narrow sweatband as well. It looks like there's evidence for it in these pictures, so I trimmed mine from 1 and 1/2 inches, (The top of my sweatband was even with the top of the ribbon before) down to 1 inch. A narrower sweatband allows more back tilt, and a more obvious front pinch below the top of the ribbon.
I believe the Raiders hat was experimentaly worn straight , turned to the left and to the right, therefore there were 3 front pinches. The far right one is where the channel formed and the weakening of the felt due to it's having formerly been a pinch assisted it's ability to form the channel. The former dead center pinch is now a raised area enhancing the depth of the channel.
Was there a bad stitch? Which bunched the felt and produced the channel in the front dent that extends beneath the ribbon above Indy's right eye?
- Here's the front pinch shifted over to where the pleat is. Maybe the hat needed to be adjusted tighter and this is how they did it. This would hardly be visible through the ribbon.Then they might have tightened the ribbon since the circumfrence of the crown is now smaller- and maybe they overtightened it?
Is there a mast in that sail?
On the "Bonus Material" DVD, Alfred Molina is talking about the tarantula scene - " The tarantula thing, that was the first day, and that was my first shot of the first day" .. Was he talking about the first day of Raiders filming?- Explains the hat that day!
Dakota Ellison bought a Raiders era Herbert Johnson with a very Raiders looking bow, and posted pictures of the bow dissasembled. Instead of the usual single stich holding down the horizontal fold, there were 2 stitches, about a half inch apart. This gives the Raiders bow it's puffiness. Also, these stitches are at an angle which produces the arch shape in the puff in the back half of the bow. (The vertical pleat is some hemming I did, not there on Dakota's vintage bow)
This scene is from a TV show made in 1981 and is on a VHS tape titled "Great Movie Stunts & The Making Of Raiders of the Lost Ark". Harrison is folding the right brim up against the crown , while his left hand is gripping the edge of the brim just to the right of his right eye. This puts a distinct bend there in the brim, and causes the right brim to angle upwards. I adjust my hat in the same way to get the classic Raiders look.
Wire Safety- When I installed my wire, I had a problem with it constantly backing out. I'd push it back in with a tooth-pic daily, and my brim deveoped a chunk out of the edge of the brim, like Indy's hat here (and this is where Indy's wire is, I believe). I finally bent the outer 1/8 inch of the wire about 80 degrees and pushed it into the bim side ways, about 3mm back from the edge. Fixed the problem long term, and there is no way anyone can get scratched.
Here is a 1990's Herbert Johnson Poet. (H.J. produced the Raiders hat). Notice the little bright spot on the dark ribbon on the left. This is a ribbon atatchment stitch. If this hat was given the Raiders turn, this stitch would be located where the channel in the Raiders hat is. I believe this stitch was a litte sloppy on the Raiders hat, and bunched the felt, producing the channel.
I put a stitch (pleat) in my hat, before I realized HJ had a ribbon stitch there. I thought it was possibly a sweatband stitch, but this seemed to be the right location for it. Then Molorom got a channel when he stiched on his ribbon, and reported it at Indyfan.com. which reminded me of the H.J. stitch above. My stitch doesn't go through the ribbon. It's hard to see an actual stitch on the outside of the Raiders ribbon. It's probably there, or possibly the original Raiders ribbon was replaced or removed and the stitch remained. This stitch gives the crown a slightly bulb shape, which I always thought it had. It has also given the hat a deeper top bash somehow.
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Indyfans who have given their hats the Raiders turn.
The notion that the Raiders hat was worn off-center has become accepted fact among many Indiana Jones gear collectors over the past year and a half. The highest profile Indy hat maker in the U.S.A., Peters Bros., will fashion your hat off center, upon request. --- The observations and theories I present below are not widely recognized as either true or false at this time....
