Hat Care
Things to remember
If you make your cap wet, it will take on shape as it dries! If you don't provide the shape, it will shrink to its own smaller shape. If you want it to fit your head, dry it on your head. If you want it to be shaped like a coffee mug, dry it in a mug. If you use rubber bands and you make the rubber bands too tight, you will see rubber band marks
Cleaning a 59FIFTY...never wash the cap!
The cap is made of wool and you will ruin its shape. To clean the headband, take a wet washcloth and put a little detergent and a little Spray and Wash Then gently rub down the headband with the wet wash cloth. After you have sufficiently cleaned the headband of sweat stains and soil, rinse the wash cloth out with clear water and once again wash down the headband, cleaning up any left soap. Let dry and your cap will be ready to go again. Some sweat stains stay in but at least the cap will be clean.
Dusty caps?
For things like little cat hair or lint, just take some masking tape (I like the 2 inch size) and wrap some of it around your fingers so the sticky side is exposed and dab the hat with the tape. The tape will pick up all the lint and anything else on the cap.
Just a little big?
Take a spray bottle of water and spray the headband with the water, then let it dry in the sun on top of an empty coffee can. Or, just let it dry without being elevated by the can. You can also dry it with a good portable hair dryer.
Drying
DO NOT put them in the dryer!
What if it is too tight?
In this case the sweatband does its job and collects any moisture when you are wearing the cap. Without a head, to hold its shape and size, it will shrink as it dries. For starters, grab your cap from the rear side, place it over your knee and give a good hard yank. You will hear some popping noises. That's O.K. Stop pulling, after you hear a couple of these noises. If you pull too hard and too long, you could rip a seam. We DON'T want that!! Actually, doing this way, you are breaking the sizing, which is a stiff plastic strap that we sew into the cap for shape and size maintenance purposes.
Hat Facts
22 Steps To Perfection
- 1 Eight rows of lock stitching hold your visor together despite the worst abuse. Pull one stitch. Pull two. It still holds together.
- 2, 3, 4, 5 Raised embroidery looks better. That's why we've worked so hard to perfect it. And if we told you the secret, we would have to kill you.
- 6 Embroidery looks better when the crown holds its shape. That's why we fuse the crown.
- 7, 19 The fabric dye lot for each button has to match the cap dye lot. Underneath, buttons are made of galvanized steel to prevent rust.
- 8 Each panel seam looks good from the outside because we use a Triple Lock number 401 stitch. It looks good from the inside because we use our special fabric tape.
- 9 Our inside detailing accounts for our precise fit and our spectacular durability. Even our inside button is pinpoint accurate.
- 10 Our 100% cotton face cloth sweatband will absorb a bathtub's worth of sweat.
- 11 Dupont formulation visor allows you to bend to your heart's desire without breaking.
- 12 Our hand blocking raises the embroidery, smoothes and shapes the seams, and adds a final touch of love.
- 13 When you're as fanatical as we are about caps, you tend to be a little superstitious-so let's just say step 13 is in there but we don't like to talk about it.
- 14 We sew our tag with two seams so it won't flop out and bug you.
- 15 Six eyelets. 36 stitches trim each eyelet. Details like that make the difference.
- 16, 17 We switched from eight panels to six in 1938. Six panel construction allows for a better fit.
- 18 New Era's 59FIFTY is 100% worsted wool for great insulation and ventilation.
- 20 Our herringbone weave buckram adds extra durability even if you do put it in the dishwasher. [but please don't!]
- 21 An extra row of stitching prevents the cap from rolling under. Something we learned about 40 years ago.
- 22 Kiss it, pack it, and send it off with love.
Nobody's really sure when the tradition of "telescoping," a.k.a. "barnrolling" or "cradling" or "puttin' on the blinders," began. Diehards in the east'll tell you that it was started in the twenties on the streets of Philadelphia, while others scoff and tell how farmboys on the plains would roll their bills to cut out the glare from the hot sun on Kansas ball fields, long before the century turned. Either way, great fielders agree on the powerful tunnel vision effect that helps to lock down on a blistering grounder or separate the roaring crowds from the towering fly balls as they take you to the fence.
And if it took twenty distinct steps to make each New Era 59FIFTY pro cap we'd be proud to tell you just that. But it doesn't, it takes 22. That's because we're not into quicker or easier, but into doing what it takes. We found it takes 22. That's all the stitching, folding, fusing, embroidering, steam-blocking, and kissing it goodbye. That's 44 different hands, and 44 eyes on 22 real-live people who together share a single dedication to quality and craftsmanship and the elimination of errors.
Pick up any cap close to you. If it has embroidery, get it real close to an eyeball. Look at it. If it's one of ours, you'll see layer upon layer of meticulous embroidery. Each piece of embroidered art has anywhere between 8,000 and 31,000 stitches. That could mean an hour and a half on one of our embroidery machines for the artwork on just one cap. But it's worth every minute. The embroidery is the icing on the cake. Each stitch is carefully plotted. Point A to point B. If it takes 22,000 stitches to complete a team logo, well, that's 44,000 points that must be plotted. This information is used for a test run. And people with years of experience critique those tests. If thread number 12,766 isn't right, they'll see it and we'll fix it. That's not easy work. But you're going to wear that work on your head. It's art.
We have a room in Derby where the "A Team" works. Each person on the team is skilled in several of the 22 steps required to make our 59FIFTY. This room is a microcosm of our entire factory. Here, we can make any cap from start to finish. It's where we test out crazy ideas. Any fabric you can think of. New types of thread for embroidery. Custom designed logos. This is the one room where we try to fail. Where we test the limits. Some of our employees have been with New Era for a long time. Nine years. 13 years. 25 years. Remember watching the '93 World Series? Joe Carter hit that homer around 10:30 pm Eastern time. Our factory was buzzing like crazy by 10:31. Those magical moments are a part of sports history, and also part of ours.
Have you ever witnessed hundreds of hands flying? There are hundreds of sewing machines in our factories. And highly-skilled people behind each one. Panels are joined. Seam tape is attached. Eyelets are trimmed. Visors are fastened to crowns. It's an art. One of the most important jobs is running a seam around the circumference of each cap to keep the lower edges from rolling under. And there just isn't a machine that can do it right. (Oh sure, machines have automated a few of the steps along the way, but even those steps have to be monitored by people who know what makes a good cap good.) Sweat. You'll put plenty into your own cap someday. We put some in already. Part of the reason each New Era cap looks as good as it does is because of a process called blocking. Most of our competitors have decided this step isn't worth the effort. Others use a machine. Just before each New Era cap gets packed up, it gets a steam bath. Then someone like Mike or Gary or Jason puts your cap on a wooden block and shapes it. All that steam and sweat and the wood help to press the seams flat, raise the embroidery and do something really interesting.