When we first designed the cowboy style Scout (we learned later the shape is a modified “Gus”), we shaped each panama by hand over steam, creasing the top of the crown and working in the "dents" on either side. When the style took off and became a favorite, we decided to have a metal mold made for our hat press and sent a particularly nice hat off to Brooklyn. 

We went to Manhattan for a trade show and visited the Brooklyn workshop to see the new mold. Good that we did; the hat we sent was damaged in shipping and the new mold featured a big crease. 

Back in California, Stefan crafted a model of the hat in plaster. He used some of the techniques he had learned making a half model in an Evergreen College boat design program taught by celebrated yacht designer Bob Perry. A hat mold has to smoothly accommodate the hat body and to be the same distance from front to back and side to side and in this case be a mirror image side to side. 

As a note, the stay in Ecuador that introduced Stefan to panama hats was initiated by helping crew a sail from San Francisco to the Panama Canal on a Robert Perry designed Valiant 40 yacht.