Options for your Custom Hat
Add a Cavalry Cord $20.00
Cavalry Legend
“Slouch Hats” worn by many Cavalry soldiers since the days of the American Civil War often include a colored cord that slides over the standard satin ribbon and bow hatband, which is referred to as a cord, braid, hobble, wrap, or acorn.
Guidelines for the use of the Cavalry Cord and colors were first outlined in 1890 in Circular 10, from the U.S. Army Adjutant General’s Office. Different colors are used to identify different branches of the service. The most common color, yellow, is worn by all enlisted Cavalry soldiers. Infantry wear white, Scarlet is for Artillery; Black; Chaplains/Staff, Black/Gold; Field Officer, Black/Silver; Warrant Officer.
The original reason for the acorns at the end of the cavalry cords is believed to have been to keep the cavalry man awake in the saddle, from the gentle drumming as the acorns bounced off the brim.
Battle/Combat Knots
There is a Cavalry legend that credits a non-com during the Civil War with tying knots in his cord to signify he’d been battle tested. The idea caught on and many units took to the practice on both sides. You can see an example on our Josey Wales Hat. Today cav cords can be knotted but it does not signify battle tested. Shoulder patches originated in the First World War to identify units, battalions or regiments. Combat patches (to signify a period of service in a war zone) started during the Second World War and continues to this day.
Add Trail Dust $55.00 – $95.00
Many customers have been requesting that we dirty up their new hats to make them look trail worn. Pictured is a dusty Josey Wales – our Josey Wales hat with several years’ worth of trail dust – as if a hard living horse soldier had been wearing it.
We’ve got three different degrees of trail dust. Light (add $55.00) – medium (add $75.00), and heavy (add $95.00). Light would be what you see on our Boss Spearman medium would be like the dusting on the TRISTAN; and heavy trail dust looks like our Josey Wales.
This is a similar process that costume designers apply to hats in the movies and t. v. Looks authentic and yore friends will swear yer just got off a trail drive, or a hitch in the Horse Cavalry! You can add trail dust during the check out process – or request it when you call your order in.
Add a Windstring/Stampede String $25.00
Our Windstring/Stampede String is made of heavy gauge Latigo lace {brown or black} and includes this complimenting leather slider. click image for a larger version
You can let us choose the right match for your hat or request brown or black latigo lace to go with your hand made cowboy hat.
Just add your request to the PRODUCTION NOTES as you build your hat.
Horsehair Hatbands $20.00 – $55.00
Add a quality horse hair hat band to any hat (ADD during checkout with the purchase of a hat – not sold separately). Can be worn on ANY hat just by sliding it over the satin ribbon and bow {as seen on the Wasey} or wear it alone.
Captain Call a custom cowboy movie hat from Lonesome Dove (1989)
Bound Brim
Binding the brim edge with the same Grosgrain ribbon as the hat band, strengthens the edge, making it stiffer and allowing the brim shape to hold better.
A bound edge finishes the brim off nicely with rich looking detail. Most small brimed, or Town hats, have a bound edge.
The open crowned hat style was perhaps the most common crown style of the late 19th century and sold in the mail order catalogues of the day like, Sears-Roebuck, and the Hudson Bay Company.
Cowboys would crease and mold the crown, to add character to their hat, and make it easier to pick up. Decades later the hat companies started pre-creasing the cowboy hats in the most popular styles.
A bound Brim is more difficult to re-work or re-shape – but can be removed fairly easily.
Open Brim
Not as dressy or showy as a bound edge, this unfinished brim edge was much more common on working hats, cavalry and military hats.
An unfinished brim allows you to shape and mold it to your taste – or easily change the look in the future.
An Unfinished Brim is more for an everyday-do-yer-work type Cowboy Hat and likely the more common of the two finishes for a wide brimmed cowboy hat. It is also fairly easy to reshape the brim of a beaver/beaver blend cowboy hat with just a steam iron and a bit of patience.
Our Sundance Kid Custom Handmade Hat is a good illustration of the typical 19th century nondescript everday cowboy hat
** Shipping time is still 6-8 weeks on our custom hats **
Our Beaver Fur Felt Hat Bodies
All our hats are made with beaver fur felt which is dense and virtually waterproof. It consists of beaver and/or rabbit/hare fur blended with felt to produce a material that lasts 5-10 times longer than wool-felt.
A fine Beaver and Beaver blend fur-felt hat body holds its shape wonderfully and is the best material from which to manufacture hats.
As a general rule of thumb if a hat maker just describes their hat bodies as fur-felt, chances are it’s rabbit or Hare. Hat makers who use beaver fur-felt are proud of it and will state so.
In theory the higher the beaver content the higher the X factor – but unfortunately there is no standard within the hat making fraternity – and a lot of confusion. On the Internet few hat sellers tell you what their fur-felt is comprised of – and even seen straw hats promoted as 100X. The rough beaver hat bodies we use to make our cowboy hats are the best available and made in America.
We sell 3 quality beaver blends of fine western hats – 5X, 20X and 100X.
- 5X is a blend of about 5% beaver with rabbit and felt.
- 20X is 50% beaver blend
- 100X is pure 100% beaver fur felt
For an all weather hat you can’t beat a pure beaver cowboy hat. Light, stiff and fabulous looking it’ll shed what ever comes its way. And consider this: Beavers live in the water, rabbits in the dirt.
- GENERAL PRICING includes shipping in North America
– 5X – 350.00 5% BEAVER HAT BODY
– 20X – 480.00 50% BEAVER HAT BODY
– 100X – 750.00 100% BEAVER HAT BODY
– Prices for individual hat styles will vary
Frontier or long haired fur-felt. The more rabbit or hare in the hat body the longer the fur felt will be. 5x will be the longest and 100x the shortest.
A young buffalo bill cody
FRONTIER FUR FELT
The Dodge City is shown in long hair Beaver fur-felt. Some call it SHAGGY some call it GRIZZLY, we prefer the name FRONTIER fur-felt to describe it, as this is what the very first beaver fur-felt would have been like.
Not as long as Buffalo Bill Cody’s hat seen here, but longer than today’s standard hat bodies.
You’ve likely seen this look before in a western movie. You can generally spot a long haired fur-felt in most of the westerns filmed in the 1930s and 40s. Errol Flynn wore it in several of his western movie’s like Dodge City.
FRONTIER FUR FELT has all the same characteristics as our fine, standard hat bodies – just a longer finish to the fur of the hat. You can request Frontier Fur Felt for any of our hats, simply by entering the request in the PRODUCTION NOTES.
Crown and Brim Measurements
The first steps in the crafting of a fine custom cowboy hat.
We make hand-made custom cowboy hats so the crown and brim measurements are pretty much redundant. The hats you see online are our standard hats, which have specific crown heights and brim widths to maximize the look of that particular style or hat design.
If you wish a different crown height or brim width, or if you want to tell us anything else about the making of your hat, just enter it into the PRODUCTION NOTES as you put together your hat order.
We can make up to a six (6″) inch crown and a five (5″) brim. Any hat with a brim width of more than 4 inches we must start with an oversized hat body, which adds a little to the cost.
However the oversized brim can give you up to 50% more sun/bad weather protection, than a regular hat body.
Some hat styles with a wider brim include The Wasey, Quigley, Everett Hitch, Blondie, Little J, The Dunson, Last of the Dogmen, Wild Bill, all our B-Movie hats, and many of our Custom Rodeo Hats.
A Note about Color
Color variances caused by individual computer monitors is beyond our control.
Light colors will reflect heat the best – while dark colors will retain the heat the most – with black being the worst for staying hot (black absorbs sunlight). However black is the most formal color so bowlers and top hats were generally black or dark gray.
Please keep in mind we try to take our pictures with natural light – so differences between the same color reflects the difference in light when the picture was taken: Indoors, Outdoors, Sunny Day or Cloudy.
For the first 15-20 years cowboy hats were marketed – your choice of color was black and about 3 shades of brown.
Starting with the lightest and going to the darkest, here’s our colors
COLOR DESCRIPTION
- BONE dirty white, the color of a bleached bone
- SILVER MIST very pale gray
- SILVER BELLY another pastel color this is a grayee-brown
- SAND a very pale yellow. Beach sand color
- GRANITE a light to medium light gray
- CHARCOAL a dark gray
- BLACK CHERRY has an apple red undertone. Only noticeable in bright light
- BLACK the most popular hat color
- SAHARA mid brown a shade lighter than natural
- NATURAL rich mid brown the color of a beaver pelt
- PECAN A browny-green. KHAKI
- RUST a dark browny-red, the deep color of a rusty metal pipe
- BUCKSKIN a bright yellowy brown
- WHISKEY dark amber like a shot of whiskey
- MOSS GREEN a dark rich green
- CHOCOLATE a dark brown
- NAVY BLUE dark blue
True Old West Hats
Order your hat in 100X undyed, pure beaver fur-felt, and be one of the first to hearken back to an era in hat making a hundred and forty years ago. The first cowboy hats were made from 100% beaver fur-felt, natural and undyed, and unless the cowboy lost it or had it stolen – the hat lasted a lifetime. For an all weather hat – nothing beats a traditional western hat made from pure beaver fur – it’s what old west cowboys wore.
COLOR PALETTES
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Hat Sizes
BEST PRACTICES!
You should know your hat size – just like you know your shoe size, pant, shirt or ring size.
If you are new to wearing sized hats it is always a good idea to visit your nearest mall and try on a few. That way you know fit and what your size is.
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Most hat sizes have only 3/8th of an inch difference between them, so just a 1/4 inch makes a big difference in the fit of a sized / fitted hat.
- If you are a hat person, order your usual North American hat size. Our sizing is the same. The chart at right gives our standard hat sizing and the corresponding European sizes.
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If you own a good hat, and can’t remember the size, turn the sweatband down and look at the underside. Most good hat makers will write key info on the back, including the hat size.
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If you only know your hat size in cm, find the corresponding hat size at right to order, then add your size in cm to the production notes as you put your hat order together.
If you wish to confirm your hat size by measuring your head
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You’ll need a friend, and a soft tape measure to measure with. You know – the type the fella uses to measure your trouser inseam.
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Look straight ahead and have your helper measure your head. Using the soft tape – they should measure over your hair, just above your ears, and a half inch above your eye brows.
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Make sure the tape is slightly slack – but not loose. You should be able to feel the tape but it should not be tight – or the fit will be as well! Measure twice – to be sure. BUT ONCE AGAIN NEVER MEASURE TIGHT.
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Match your head measurement to the closest corresponding hat size and enter it in the production notes section of the order.
WHEN YOU GET YOUR HAT
Your hat comes with a couple of felt stays that slide up under the sweat band should the hat be slightly loose. They act as a shim. And should the hat be a touch snug the hat stretcher that comes with it will solve that. And if worse comes to worse, we will get the hat back and re-block it to the right size. We make sure that all clients get a hat that fits.
What does custom mean?
HATS
We allow clients to switch hatbands between hat styles, and request different crown and brim dimensions. As well you get your name stenciled on the sweatband inside the hat. Your name stenciled on the sweatband tells the World you have a custom hat!
Refund Policy
We are making a hand made Custom Old West, or Western Movie Hat for you. You will keep it. 99% of orders everything will go smooth. In the odd situation where it doesn’t – we will make you happy, and get it right 100% of the time.
Our Most Common Hat Question
Q: I’m looking for a ____ Hat. I checked your product catalog and didn’t see it. Can you make it?
A: In most cases, yes. I’m sure you can appreciate it’s just not possible to show all the different variations of crowns and brims. If it’s made from fur-felt and you can supply us a good picture – yes we can make it.
Generally we already carry the same style of hat, we just shape it based on the photo or if it’s a movie hat we shape it from watching the movie and seeing the hat from all possible angles to get the look just so. We can do up to a 6″ (inch) high crown and a 5″ wide brim. click for the rest of our hat facts
ALL HAT ORDERS SHIP WITH A WOODEN HAT STRETCHER A $25 DOLLAR VALUE.
NEW HAT PURCHASES ONLY
We recommend all customers who OWN a good hat, get a hat stretcher. It Is a small cost for a tool that will help keep ALL your hats fitting properly. As well, if you only wear your hat seldom; or have a number of hats you wear, you will find our wooden hat stretcher a valuable addition to maintaining the perfect shape of your custom cowboy hat. ~ Order a Hat Stretcher
Like all hat and leather products, our hat stands and hat stretchers are made in America.
Chinchilla Cowboy Hat
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