We’ve all seen western helmet/hats and to be truthful they just don’t have the same visual appeal as a traditional western cowboy hat. I know we should all be wearing helmets and I totally agree that it’s the safer option. It’s just so hard to find one that looks good while riding western! Here are some instructions for making your own Hellhat! Also, if you’d rather purchase an easy option this is my favorite western hat brim for helmets on Amazon. It keeps the sun off of me and looks great: https://amzn.to/3M2blOs
Hellhat posted in Karen’s HellHat® Posse Facebook Group.
Thankfully Karen and her husband Mark Plumlee have come up with a great looking way to sport a western helmet. The best part is you can choose the brim of any hat you like and you can make it yourself! They have a Facebook page with instructions, but we have also included them below.
Step 1: Cut off the Brim.Step 2: Place your helmet on the brim and draw a line around your helmet. If your helmet has a visor, do not draw a line around the visor. Leave the visor in place, but just connect the 2 sides of the line. The visor will be useful to lend some integrity to the front of the hat brim.Step 3: You now have a brim with a line on it.Step 4: Define your line so it’s kind of even.Step 5: Cut pies to your line about every inch or so. NOTE: You don’t really have to cut pies if you don’t want to. You can also just make relief cuts from the inner circle to the line. If you find that it is still to small, cut your lines a little longer. The effect is the same, you get “tabs” to tape or glue on (they use duct tape).Step 6: Spray the brim with water to soften up the pies, then press it down evenly over the crown of the helmet. Position so it sits the way you want it when the helmet is on your head. The front of the hat should sit down on the helmet visor. (They like the Tipperary Sportage because it has a short visor that is not seen under the hat brim).Step 7: Secure it with a base layer of duct tape. Karen always leaves the base layer on, then she adds different colors depending on what she is wearing. But they never remove the base layer. You can go with a plain black or gray and hot glue a belt or cool hat band of your choice. Karen has 2 HellHats and several colors of duct tape as well as several colors of flowers and feathers. Use a separate small piece of matching duct tape to hold in place. People always think that the duct tape is a hat band and are surprised when we just tell them it’s duct tape. YES it wrinkles, but with the patterned tape, you really never see the wrinkles.
I can see this being done with show hats as well. Just use something like a GPS helmet that’s small and dark black and put your favorite black hat brim on it. We encourage everyone to ride with a helmet and this just makes it a bit more stylish!
