Does anyone know of ANYWHERE that i can get a beaverskin hat blocked? For those who don't know: back in teh day when men wore bowler hats and derbys and the like, they would get dents in the top of them. When this happened, you used to be able to take them to a dry cleaners and have them blocked. This was the removal and prevention of the dents and ripples. I have NO idea who still does this, but i imagine that if i found a place that still did it, I cold send it to them, and have them comb the felt as well.

I have a derby hat i need blocked and combed

Anyone? you might check with your dry cleaners or local hatter?

Eww...

I've know idea Nickelplate. Maybe that was one of the operations they used to do with mercury and consequently is now impracticable.

"Impracticable" is a perfectly acceptable word, and used correctly in this case. Or maybe you were referring to the contrast between that and my grammatical faux pas with "know"? Whatever.

impracticable is "un-practice-able"

Anyway, The mercury was used for waterproofing the hats, not blocking. apparently this hat was also treated with "uranio" or Uranium in italian, italy is where this VERY old hat was made..

i need to get a geiger counter for this.

to orph. "soon they will come out with technology to punch ppl in the face over the net, I'm pre-ordering mine."

There probably isn't very much uranium in it, but even if there was a reasonable amount it probably wouldn't register much beyond backround noise as U-238 has a long half life, and decays by alpha decay, which wont register on most geigers as the alphas get stopped by the tiniest of margins. There will be the occaisonal fission, but that is much much lower probability than the decay.