Intrepid correspondent Robert Romano has provided this excellent Pinch Hit about the care and feeding of the polyester baseball cap. You can't get this kind of information just anywhere.
Like many
of you, I like to wear official MLB gear, including New Era's line of baseball
caps. In particular, the 59Fifty. As many have already noticed, the 2007
edition of the hat is made of polyester, in contrast to its wool predecessors. It
used to be sufficient to rinse the hat with warm-to-hot water, and then simply
put it on as it dried and shrank to the shape of your head. This won’t work
with polyester. Apparently, one of the reasons for switching to polyester was
to prevent shrinkage. However, for fans who do not have big heads, and
who do not want their official hat to sit tall on their heads, and consequently
have a need to break their hats in, the new design is a disaster. Traditional
methods for breaking in ball caps will not do, and I had to do some
experimentation to break in the new polyester hat.
Well, fear not, fans. After doing some investigation online, I discovered that
to shrink polyester fabric, you need to heat it to over 81 degrees Celsius (177
degrees Fahrenheit) but under 230 degrees Celsius (446 degrees Fahrenheit), as
this is when the fabric melts.
There are two ways to do this at your house. Either a) cook the hat in your
oven at about 300 degrees Fahrenheit or b) boil it. But don’t do that right
away! You have to prepare the hat to prevent side effects. Follow these steps
in order:
1) Wash the
hat with a small amount of laundry detergent in the sink. Don’t put it in the
washer/dryer! The washer/dryer would shred your hat to bits. The reason you
need to wash it is that the hats have excess dye which will bleed into white
fabric when wet, and you're going to need to get the hat wet numerous times in
this process. So, wash your hat in the sink until most or all of the excess dye
has dripped out of it.
2) Preheat your oven to about 300 degrees Fahrenheit.
3) Take a hot shower - as hot as you can make it without scalding yourself -
with the hat on. Here, you're trying to get the hat to conform to the shape of
your head. Try gripping it tightly so the inside mesh begins to bend backwards.
You may need to experiment a bit in the mirror to see how you want it shaped
while the hat is soaking wet. This will give you an idea of how to hold it
tightly in the shower. After about 10 minutes of holding it - while it's on
with the hot water running - to the shape you want it to be, your oven should
be hot enough to cook your hat.
4) Put the hat in the oven immediately. Don't worry, this won't melt it.
The hat is 100% polyester, and as long as you keep it below 446 degrees
Fahrenheit, it won't melt. That's why I recommend about 300 degrees Fahrenheit,
a sufficient temperature to shrink the fabric and yet not do any damage. Leave
it in the oven until it’s dry.
5) Take the hat out of the oven, let it cool off for a few minutes, and try it
on. If it fits the way you like, then you're done. If not, you still need to
shrink it some more. Read on.
6) Get a large pot and fill it with water, enough to submerge the hat in. On
the stove, bring the water to a rolling boil. Once the water's boiling, put the
hat in. Leave it there for about 10 to 15 minutes. If you notice the water turning
a reddish or any other color, don’t panic; that's just more excess dye bleeding
out. If, when you take the hat out, the dye has bled into the white fabric of
the hat, wash it immediately (as you did in Step 1), as you do not want the dye
to stain the white fabric.
7) Get back in the shower, with the hat on, with hot water, as in Step 3. Hold
it in the shape you want it to be again. Do this for about 10 minutes or so.
8) Put it back in the oven at about 300 degrees Fahrenheit to dry it off. When
it's dry, take it out, let it cool, and try it on.
9) Repeat these steps until you can get it to shrink sufficiently to the shape
of your head.
10) Leave
the hat on for an hour or two and work on the brim to get it to the shape you
want.
Remember
that you need to heat polyester to over 177 degrees Fahrenheit in order to get
it to shrink, so getting it to partially shrink and then wearing it hoping the
rest of it will break in over time will not work. This is much more tedious
than breaking in any of your previous wool hats, but it will work with time and
patience.
I suspect, because of the difficulty in breaking in the new polyester hats, that
this may be the last time New Era uses polyester. However, polyester does have
advantages over wool: it doesn’t smell like a wet dog when you get it wet and
it's more durable. So, if you have the patience to break in your new hat, it
could wind up being a longer-lasting alternative to the traditional wool hat,
and you'll be able to wear it around your girlfriend or wife without her
turning her nose up in disgust.
That’s how I broke in my polyester hat, but there may be better methods out there that you discover as you're working on it. If you find any, please post them here.
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