The Reverse Taper: How???

[geo]

I've been able to get a reverse taper in my hats by wetting just the bottom half of the crown thoroughly with water in a spray bottle and then binding it tightly, tying the knots on the sides of the crown where I wanted to see the most shrinkage.

What do you do with the hat ribbon? Do you remove it prior to this treatment and put it back after, but tighter?

 

[Russ]

I left my hat ribbon on because I'm lazy. I've done this on three hats, and only one of them has a slightly loose ribbon now, but it's not so noticeable actually unless you play with it. If it were noticeable, I'd take it off and tighten it (not much work involved, but hey, I'm lazy). I guess the ribbons were really tight to begin with, or maybe they shrank a bit with the crown.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that while the hat was wet I did the lamp trick, turning it upside down and placing a hot desk lamp over the opening to shrink the leather sweat band. This way both the felt and the leather shrank.

 

[Dinerman]

but is this really considered a reverse taper in the true sense of the word?

 

[Russ]

I don't know what the true sense of reverse taper would be, but the taper on my hat goes the opposite direction now, and when I throw the gear on my car in reverse, it also goes in the opposite direction. If the discussion gets any deeper than that, I must plead ignorance!

 

[geo]

Maybe there's a natural way to get the reverse taper effect, by wearing the hat a lot while doing some sort of physical exercise that causes one to sweat. The sweat will moist the sweatband and the heat radiated by the wearer's head will shrink it. It looks to me that the moisturing and heating with the lamp is the same process, but accelerated.

 

[BellyTank]

You see the reverse taper effect in very old hats which haven't been maintained (excusing those examples with original reverse taper). The hat's crown begins to loose shape and sink but the sweatband and ribbon hold the bottom of the crown in the original* shape.

Put a centre crease in any Fedora and keep pushing it in- depending on how straight/tapered and rounded/radiused the crown was to begin with, you'll achieve the reverse taper to a varying degree.

B
T

 

[johnnycanuck]

I got a reverse taper in my daily wear hat. Its because when I overheat and sweat the sweatband gets wet and shrinks. That and when I put it on I squish it on my head by pushing down on the crown. My new daily wear is not getting that at all because I went with a c-crown rather then a center dent. My two cents.
Johnny

 

[BellyTank]

Yes- that's the flip-side to the crown-getting-floppy, sweat remaining constant scenario.

Good point.

B
T

 

[Justdog]

Reverse

Don't know. Hope that someone can tell us.


You can see a good '30s example of a reverse taper in the top righthand image:

Is this similar to what you described?

http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d138/justdog/Hats/Reverse.jpg

 

[thunderw21]

Is this similar to what you described?

http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d138/justdog/Hats/Reverse.jpg

Yep, that's a reverse taper. Looks nice too.

 

[AdmiralTofu]

Don't know. Hope that someone can tell us.


You can see a good '30s example of a reverse taper in the top righthand image:

fftopic: Hey, is anybody else seeing a young Martin Milner in that top-right guy? I swear -- spitting image!

I love that hat, Justdog. I like the reverse taper, too.