Tom Hirt - Hat Maker for Hollywood.

just demoness to get it's the first soft my name is Tom hurt and I've been making hats for cowboys ranchers movies politicians you name them fur this is my 40th year and I started when I was 12 not really but I got involved in this not by choice it wasn't what I planned on doing I had been working on a lot of ranches around the country when years ago and I got a job doubling Mark Harmon in a movie called comes a horseman and then I worked on that and I worked with Richard Farnsworth in the same movie and Jason Robards and but I thought this is pretty cool I can be a cowboy ride horses be on a movie set make a heck of a lot more money and so I finished that picture up and I asked questions Richard Farnsworth was really helpful over the years came by in the past and Sam Elliott came out and did a picture called Conor ger and he heard about me and he came and right to my house and we sat there and talked hats and movies and stuff like that and so I did his hats and some other ones for the movie Connor ger and then come back here and pull it down over this woodblock there was an active strike and I wasn't didn't have that much that much I wasn't didn't save up that much money I wasn't didn't have any any I was just somebody working trying to get to keep a job and so I had to go during the actor strike and find myself a job and in downtown Colorado Springs there was a hat shop and I just strolled in there one day and started talking to the man wounded heart Henderson and he says uh well you seem really interested in this I said well it is interesting he says well why don't you come work for me and so I did and I apprenticed under him and ended up buying the business and that was in 1980 hey hey how are you guys yes yes I could be with him all day every day it's not difficult to learn it's difficult to get to do it well I teach this at the Pratt I teach several classes around the country at making classes and the interest is is phenomenal I cannot believe as many people are interested in what I do and have been doing for years this creates the the size of the of the hat the style of the crown here and the height of the crown from here to here Sam Elliott I'm wondering when he called me to do congra from here opened a lot of doors for me and then he did to quicken the dead he did you know my name about Bill Tilghman sheriff he a whole bunch of other things and I just was he was always calling me and saying I need a half for this I need a half for that several years later after working with him several on several pictures he called me up one day and he says Tom I gave your name to the producer on the people who needed to know we're doing a movie called tombstone we're doing it down here in Tucson and they were interested in somebody who could build an authentic looking hack for the picture I said he said so I gave him your name they will be calling you which was a another huge break but it was because of Sam elegant and so then I want to work for them doing that picture and spent a year just doing that picture and that was in 1993 I believe and and then when the movie was over Val Kilmer asked me to do a series of hats for him that he sell and this was way back when the movie was just over and I sure and so we worked together doing a series of hats way back then and then right here in the last couple years with the 20th and 25th anniversary of the movie tombstone he's contacted me again and said let's let's do this again and so now I'm back to doing hats Ravel and he sells a minds website so Val Kilmer comm this is a flange stand and this is a flange take your crown your crown block out of the Hat then you invert it in here and now you've got a sizing ring which goes inside here this help keeps the size of the Hat the same while you're working on it this is the way your standard hat is finished that's the way they're finished and I figured this custom hat they ought to get some custom items like this is all this is deerskin lacing did I lace this with I answer the phone woman answer woman people or I pick up the phone woman says this is the white house secretary and the president would like to speak to you and I said oh shoot somebody for the lake joke and so I hello and he says yes Tom yes sir and he says say I want to thank you for that wonderful hat and you did for me several years ago he says I need two more would you make me two more hats send him to the ranch in Santa Barbara for me I said yes sir yes sir he says to me now I don't want you to give this hat to me I don't want you to discount this hat for me I want you to charge whatever you charge for the Hat he says I know I can afford it a lot better than you can afford to give it away like I said yes sir yes there is a there's a great interest in it now I'm thrilled the two to show them a teacher I know some people say why are you doing that your your your your your information that you've learned all these years I said well somebody has to I like to see the interest the passing on what I know on to somebody else now I do these hats differently than a lot of other people do because I don't have any hat equipment to do it with I do it much like it was done say in the late 1800s little steam everything is done by hand hand finished and soand formed over my blocks and and I've got a collection of blocks ten times as much as what I have here but this will be steamed and if a defer will get real soft an end or you form it over the block and you and and you'll leave it set fro oh I usually leave them set overnight at least and then come back and start finishing the crown of the half till you take all the nap off so you can get it real slick and smooth like this hat is this is something that will be fun to see don't usually do this because when you're finishing these hats a technique that is not most people don't see very often you see all the rough hairs on here I'm gonna rough it up even more I want to take him take some of these wild hairs off to this hat without staff nice and the whole thing so ready I [Music] light it on fire that will burn all those long hairs off once I get it all all those long hair is burnt like that then I come back with my use these just this pad and I can and I can rub it and lift all those furs off all those hairs off the best is a beaver hat that's the best hat you can do now it's very expensive for a beaver hat so they do a beaver blend and as so you blend a certain amount of rabbit or hare har-ee into the beaver hair because they all have the same way of connecting fibers they all lock together the animals and so by adding rabbit fur in with the beaver fur you bring the cost at half way down but to still a fur hat and still a good quality hat but you can also mix wool fibers in with the they generally don't mix wool with beaver unless of course you got cashmere in extent but generally it's a beaver via beaver royal blended fur hat which will bring the price even further down and then you can have a pure wool pack that will bring the price further down that way you get all these different levels of pricing now once you get a pure to the pure beaver you can go to a beaver mink or beaver chinchilla or who knows what other for cashmere and those bring the price up from the level of the pure beaver hat but for durability and wearability yeah I always pick the pure beaver hat over a beaver mink or beaver chinchilla or whatever they want to throw in there does not it you're not gonna get rich you're not gonna be a that's it you gotta work at it you gotta it's got to be your it's got to be a love there's as many hairstyles as you can imagine you know it's the thing is trying to create a new style something different and I tell my customers because they ask about styles what can I get I said your imagination is my limitation and because everything I do is by hand so if I get a can give me a picture of it I generally can do it shape it with my hand and for them sorry because shaping is a sort of like molding clay you can just kind of steam it and move it any way you want to move it and create any kind of a look you want to look yeah you want it to look like [Music]

Channel: Embracing The West

Views: 51,391

Keywords: Tom Hirt, Cowboy, Hat Maker, Cowboy Hats, Cowboy Hat Maker, Western, Western Movies, Conagher, Tombstone, Sam Elliott, Val Kilmer, Americana, Westerns, Horses, Ranch Life, Movies, Hollywood

Id: 3TlwbfePdO8

Length: 14min 1sec (841 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 21 2020