The class at the John C. Campbell Folk School back in May 2007 was terrific. Chris Ramsey substituted for Soren Berger who was unable to come because his wife was ill. Chris taught us how to make wood hats. You can see Chris' web site here. Talk about wearable art! This is it for sure.
This hat was made of fresh-cut ambrosia maple. I had sized it to fit when it was completely dry, and when it had dried out, it actually did! Chris helped us all with our hats and at the end of the week when we displayed what we had made in the big meeting room along with the students from the other classes, we were the hit of the day, all wearing wood hats. When making the full size hats, we cored out a plug from the inside of the hat blanks and made mini-hats from those plugs. I also made a baseball cap from maple. Chris showed me how to carve the grooves in the top, delineating the six panels of the hat and also showed me how to turn the little button at the top of the hat. Cutting off the fully round brim down to just the part in front common to baseball caps was interesting, but Chris did it with panache. When not turning a hat, we all worked on skills related to hat-turning in that we turned some very thin-walled bowls. That was mighty useful practice for the real thing and it also served to enhance our overall woodturning skills.
Well, I came home all excited about making a hat on my own, but there was much custom architectural work to do to catch up from having been gone for a week before I could start making hat jigs. But I eventually was able to get it done and made my first hat on my own in my own shop -- a red oak hat for Red Oak Hollow Lathe Works. I still have to make jigs for the mini-hats but for now, making the full size ones is a real kick!