In his workshop looking out over the Georgia Straight, Roger Friesen picks up the first hat block he ever made. It’s a simple, dome-block design with a dark-aged finish, the shape resembling a bald head. The plain-looking mold was first made for his wife’s millinery work and was the beginning of his hat blocking career and business, For Your Head. If you own a handmade hat, odds are, it was made using a hat block. Much like a last, the form used to make a shoe, hat blocks are wooden molds carved to configure wet fabric, such as wool or felt, into the shape of a hat. Once a prospering industry, it has since seen a decline as fewer and fewer people choose to wear structured hats. …The Sunshine Coast-based woodworker is one of the last hat-block carvers working in Canada — and the only known professional carver of this kind in B.C. Perhaps, he muses, it’s too technical a craft.