Kim’s hat block project is an outgrowth of my 3D printed hat block project. The goal of this project was to scan an extant vintage hat, reverse engineer a block from it using 3D modeling software, and finally to create a wooden block from that model. This is a pretty cool project because it opens up the possibility of not only preserving vintage hats digitally, but also allowing for them to be blocked again in a multitude of sizes!
Kim’s hat is a cute little wool felt perch hat that appears to date from the 1940’s. There is a little ambiguity on that point since the hat was a thrift shop find and lacks any identifying markings or tags. Since the hat was matte colored already, all I needed to get a clean scan was remove the trim and roll eighty years of lint off it.
The scan was done by taking a series of pictures of the hat with a basic DSLR camera and stitching the images together.
The next steps are to convert hat to block and figure out in what way to create a tangible block from a computer file.