What does taper mean?

[rlk]

Please don't take my writing and repost it and still keep it quoted as if I wrote it.
Especially when I'm right. Now it's all confusing. The blue hat is in no way squeezed, it has a reverse taper.

Corrected, exsqueeze me.

 

[handlebar bart]

Now it's all confusing. The blue hat is in no way squeezed, it has a reverse taper.

It looks grey to me..........is that really blue?

 

[scottyrocks]

lol Any thread that draws Indiana Jones references into it soon becomes worthless.[huh]

I completely disagree. The photos were very good illustrations for the discussion.

 

[Richard Warren]

Taper is what most modern hat manufacturers put into hats so that your hat will not make you look like a pinhead.

 

[Mr E Train]

Taper is what most modern hat manufacturers put into hats so that your hat will make you look like a pinhead.

Fixed.

 

[tnitz]

Not all vintage felt...

Interesting conversation, actually, and I agree that the only way to judge taper is by looking at the open crowned hat. One of the purposes of creases, well, at least today, is to shape the crown to the face - a center dent tends to make the front profile acquire a "taper" that can be somewhat countered either by pulling it into a diamond or via the back ends of the front pinches.

My main point in writing, however, is to caution that NOT ALL vintage hats are less susceptible to tapering. I have long owned a ca 1910 tall western in the style Sears once called the "Chief Moses" hat. It was originally blocked with taper and that taper increases over time regardless of the lack of creases. It's a fur felt, but was not sold as a fine hat at the time. I have the original block and no for a fact that it still changes over time despite having been radically rebuilt a few times.

In all truth, the only hats I have personally ever owned that did not taper over time were those I never wore. I'm less enthusiastic about the miracle of older felt. In daily use I think nearly all soft felt hats deshape.

There is a vintage exception. My vintage bowlers don't appear to have changed at all since inception - leading me to think that maybe the issue is as much a part of additives as anything else.

All that said, be aware that MANY with equal or greater experience will disagree with what I've said so only take this as my personal experience and belief. All of my hats have had to be reblocked regularly and not from abuse.

 

[tnitz]

Brim size...

Would be interesting to hear from an old-time haberdasher, but it occurred to me that the brim width definately affects the appearance of taper. I have long despised the look of the 60's thin brimmed, tapered felt hats. Just not my cup of tea and they look terrible on me. But I also know that some of my wider brimmed hats have as much taper and I can live with it.

Comparing two hats recently, the Federation III and the Camp Draft, both based on the same block (although my Fed III was 1/4" taller for some reason), the reasons I avoid wearing the Fed III are also present in the Camp Draft but don't bother me - the wider brim, either by covering up some of the taper when viewed from eye level, or by more fully seperating the crown from my face, tends to make the Camp Draft better looking on me. And the only real difference between them (aside from slight changes in the crease) is the brim width when viewed from the front.

I know hats are all based on relative dimensions (bigger sizes of the same style should have higher crowns, etc.) but there is something very influential about the brim width that I think affects people's tolerance for crown taper.

I know people today have very distinct notions of what a hat should look like, and we cannot seperate ourselves from our current environment, but people who dislike crown taper for whatever reason might try a wider brimmed hat or taller crowns if you can find them.

 

[AlterEgo]

Interesting, "spirited" discussion here.

One thing is certain, the degree of taper or lack thereof, greatly affects the appearance of a hat on the head. Even a slight change in the crown slope of two hats that are otherwise the same makes a HUGE difference in how they look when worn.

One can seldom tell from online and catalogue photos how much taper a hat actually has. So, you order it, and when it comes, you try it on and look at yourself in the mirror. Perfect! Or Wrong! It's often the taper that makes the difference.

We measure crown height and brim width. It seems like a metric for slope could be developed to make comparison shopping easier, perhaps expressed in degrees as measured from the crown-brim intersection angle. For example, a straight-sided crown would be 90 degrees. The number would become smaller as taper increased, larger for reverse taper.

I have no idea how you would factor in the radius of the dome--some are more spherical while others are flatter--as that also affects the appearance of the hat, more or less so depending on the bash.

How each of the three measures affects the others would be a judgement call--and of course the crease can make a world of difference--but if we had some objective metric of crown taper, with experience, we could learn to make better purchase decisions.

I hate to get a brand new hat only to realize it doesn't work on my head and then have to send it back because the taper is nothing like it appeared online.

 

[tnitz]

All personal...

There's nothing wrong with taper. My personal gripe is that I can induce taper as needed with the crease, I can't remove it. Nearly all tall westerns (7-8" crown) have taper - it would be difficult to find someone who could wear such a hat without it. Also, taper allows easier removal from the block - straight can be done, but tapering is easier.

For myself, I keep coming back to a lower crowned diamond or teardrop crease for tapered crowns. Unless you want to go with some form of alpine crease, it's about the only thing I have personally found that looks good on a tapered crown. That's just me, but for what it's worth. Unfortunately, that doesn't help me at all since I have yet to find a hat with a crown high enough to put such a crease in for my own wear that doesn't end up looking too squat. But for others, it tends to look fine. The other thing I think works is what I would call a rakish teardrop, drop the rear end lower and bring the front pinches up higher to create a "streamlined" angle to the side profile. Taper seems to help the effect, I think.

 

[Richard Warren]

Fixed.

First, let me apologize to the extent my post might be regarded as implying anyone here is or resembles a pinhead. I am sure nothing could be further from the truth.

I do maintain that those with proportions and features of less than movie star grade and magnitude (that is most people) are frequently well served from a strictly aesthetic point of view by some taper; that hat manufacturers, being in the business of selling hats, know this; and hence make many hats with taper.

 

[Feraud]

Now that we know what taper means it should also be said that certain face shapes look better with a slightly tapered crown.

There is a pdf book around here somewhere showing men's faces with the ideal hat shape.

 

[Yeps]

Now that we know what taper means it should also be said that certain face shapes look better with a slightly tapered crown.

There is a pdf book around here somewhere showing men's faces with the ideal hat shape.

Here you go.
I like this chart, even if I ignored it and I am very thankful to Mr. Blaine for posting it on my help thread a while back. (I am not sure where it came from originally)

It illustrates the difference of tapered and full crowns rather well too.