Americanflat Folded Flag Display Case: An Honest Review

Nobody warns you that the flag is the hard part.

My father's flag has been folded into a tight triangle since 2009, when the honor guard did it at his burial, and for sixteen years after that it lived in a dresser drawer in the spare bedroom. I knew exactly which drawer. I opened it more times than I would like to admit and I closed it again every single time. Twice I got as far as reading the Americanflat listing on my phone, and twice I set the phone back down on the counter. The flag was fine the whole while. The flag was never the problem. The problem was that I did not want to be the man who got his father's burial flag wrong.

In mid January, Walt Nowak died at 81. Navy, a friend of my brother Ray's from the post, the kind of man who showed up an hour early to set out chairs and never once mentioned it. A few days after the funeral I brought a covered dish over to his wife Marge, who is 79, and I saw Walt's flag still in its plastic sleeve on her kitchen table where the funeral director had left it. She had nowhere to put it either. I went home, opened that drawer, and the first week of March I ordered two Americanflat folded flag display cases from Amazon. One for my mantel. One for Marge's bookcase, which Ray and I carried over and set up together on a Saturday.

That was eight months ago. Here is what I know now that I did not know when I ordered, and it is not all good news about a product carrying a 4.7 star average across eleven thousand reviews. You have already seen that it looks right in the photographs. You do not need me for that. You need somebody to tell you where it is going to annoy you.

How I've Used It

Both cases went into service the same week. Mine sits on the brick fireplace mantel in the living room, set down rather than hung, because I like being able to lift it and turn it and look at the back of the fold now and then. Marge's sits upright on the middle shelf of her bookcase, high enough that she can see it from her chair without standing up.

I set mine down on the mantel on a Sunday afternoon and then spent twenty minutes moving it two inches left and sliding it back. The mantel is a plain board over the brick and it is not perfectly level, so the case sits with a folded matchbook under one corner. It has been that way since March. I stopped seeing the matchbook somewhere around the second week and I have not bothered to hide it since.

The case arrives assembled. That is worth saying plainly, because a fair amount of what gets sold as a display case is really a kit with a bag of screws. This is not that. You set the flag in, you close it up, you put it where it goes. My ten minutes at the kitchen table included one false start where I had the flag turned so the canton was not where I wanted it, and then a slow minute after that where I did not want to force the fold and crease the wool. The case was never the slow part. My own hands were.

It weighs 3.8 pounds and it is 3.3 inches deep, and both of those numbers matter more than they sound. Light enough that I can move it with one hand to dust underneath, deep enough that it does not tip when the screen door slams. I knocked it once with the edge of a fire poker and it slid an inch and stopped.

What Nobody Tells You About the Frame Material

The Americanflat case is engineered wood. That is written on the listing in plain words and I want to be fair about it, because nobody hid anything from me. But the photograph reads like furniture, and engineered wood is not furniture. It is a composite with a finish laid over it, and the finish is what you are actually looking at. In ordinary room light on a mantel it reads as a finished case rather than a box, and eight months in there is no lifting at the corners and no swelling along the bottom edge, which was my real worry, because that mantel gets warm when the fire is going.

What I cannot tell you is how it looks in fifteen years. My father's flag will outlast me or it will not, and this case sits somewhere on that timeline and I do not know where. Solid oak answers that question and I have never owned a solid oak flag case. The only one I have handled at all is the oak case in the post hall, and that one has been in the same spot since before I started making the Thursday coffee. I judge it from across the room and from listings I have read, nothing more. So take this for what it is worth: oak costs more and it settles a question this case leaves open.

The front is not glass, it is plexiglass, and I will get to that in a minute because it is the thing I would most want a friend to tell me before I bought.

The other number worth repeating here is the footprint. 26.4 inches wide, 13.2 inches high, 3.3 inches deep. That is wider than it photographs, and it turns out to be the detail that decides where the thing can live.

The Shelf Problem Is Real

Twenty six and a half inches is more shelf than most of us have. I measured Marge's bookcase before I carried the case over, because handing a widow something that does not fit where she wants it is a worse afternoon than no gift at all. It fit, with room at the ends, but it was close. Her bookcase is not a small one. My mantel is deep enough at 3.3 inches and long enough that the case sits with a candle on either side and does not crowd them.

I used the tape measure that lives in the kitchen drawer, the same one I carried for thirty years at the dealership, and I wrote the number on the back of an envelope: 31 inches of usable shelf in her bookcase. That sounds like plenty until you lay a case that is 26.4 inches wide across it. What is left is a little over two inches at each end, which is enough for a bookend and not much else. I am glad I wrote it down instead of guessing.

A shallow floating shelf, the kind people put up for photographs, is not the right home for this. Neither is the top of a narrow cabinet. Give it a real surface or hang it.

Speaking of hanging. The listing says it mounts to a wall as well as sitting on a tabletop, mantel or shelf, and that the hardware is included. I have not hung either of mine and I am not going to tell you how that goes. What I will tell you is that you are hanging something that weighs 3.8 pounds and is more than two feet wide, and a thing like that wants a stud. A drywall anchor holding a flag case above a chair is a bad idea no matter what comes in the bag.

Ten minutes at my kitchen table, one false start, and my father's flag has not been back in a drawer since.

The Plexiglass Front Shows Everything

Plexiglass is clear and it does the job it is there for, which is keeping hands and dust off the wool. What the listing does not say is how honest it is about your house. Every fingerprint. Every fleck of dust. And the first time I cleaned mine I used a paper towel, which put a fine haze of scratches across one corner that is not coming out.

That was in April, on a Saturday, and I had the case off the mantel and sitting on the kitchen table with the window open behind it, so the light came straight through the front. That is when I saw them. They are still there. You cannot see that corner from the couch and I know exactly where to look, which is the only reason it does not bother me more than it does.

Use a soft cloth and a little water and you will be fine. There is a microfiber rag in the drawer under the mantel now and both cases get a pass every couple of weeks when I do the rest of the dusting. It is a thirty second job. It is just a job nobody mentions when they are selling you a display case.

Glass would not scratch like this. Glass also weighs more and breaks, and I honestly do not know which trade I would take if the choice were mine. After eight months and two cases, neither front has cracked, neither has clouded, and I have stopped thinking about it. That is probably the fairest thing I can say.

Getting the Flag In, and What I Got Wrong

The case is sized for a 5 by 9.5 foot burial flag, which is the size of my father's flag and the size of Walt's. If your flag came from somewhere else and you are not certain of its size, measure it flat before you order. There is nothing adjustable here. It does one job at one size and it does that job well.

The fold is the part I would tell a friend about. A flag that has been folded by an honor guard comes out of a drawer still holding most of its shape, and you want to keep what is left of it. I laid mine flat on the kitchen table, squared the corners of the triangle with two fingers, and set it in. Walt's flag was still in the plastic sleeve, so Marge and I did the same thing at her table while Ray stood there telling us both to take our time, which we did.

One thing I did that helped and would do again: I put a clean dish towel down on the table first. Wool on bare wood slides, and a flag that has been folded for sixteen years does not need to be chased across a table. The towel also gave me somewhere to set my reading glasses down where they would not scratch anything.

The one thing I got wrong was handling the flag more than I needed to. I picked it up and set it down three times before I was satisfied. Wool that old does not love being handled, and every time you open the fold a little you lose a little of the crease. Do it once, do it carefully, and then leave it alone.

What Eight Months Has and Has Not Changed

Here is the honest state of both cases. Mine has a faint print near the bottom right of the front where I steady it when I move it, and a light film of dust along the top edge if I skip a week. No cracks. No separation at the corners. No smell of finish, which I half expected the first warm week. The bottom has not marked the mantel.

Marge had the front room painted in June. She had the case off the shelf and onto the dining table under a bath towel before the painter started, and she told me on the phone that she was not letting anybody spray anything near it. I said that seemed sensible. When it went back up, the shelf had a fresh coat of paint on it and the case sat in exactly the same spot, and that was the whole move.

She dusts it herself with a cloth she keeps in the bookcase, which I did not expect and which I took as a good sign. She also said, about a week after we set it up, that she could see it from her chair now and had stopped worrying about the plastic sleeve getting torn. That is the entire review from her and I am not going to dress it up.

I have not had to tighten anything, glue anything, or take either case apart. Given what these are for, that is most of the review right there.

Who This Is For

This is for the household that has a burial flag in a drawer, a closet or a plastic sleeve and wants it out where people can see it without paying solid oak money. It is for a widow who wants it at eye level in the room she actually sits in. It is for a son or daughter doing what I did, sixteen years later than they meant to. The Americanflat case is also a reasonable gift for a veteran who has his own flag from his own service and no place to keep it, but be clear about the size before you buy, because this one is built around the burial flag and it will not stretch.

Who Should Skip It

Skip it if you want solid wood and nothing else, and you know who you are. Skip it if the only spot available is a shelf under 26.4 inches and hanging is not an option. Skip it if the flag is not a 5 by 9.5 foot burial flag, because nothing here adjusts. And skip it if the person you are buying for has told you plainly that they do not want the flag out on display. That is a real thing, more common than people admit, and it is not yours to overrule with a gift.

One last skip, and this one is harder. If the flag has been folded a long time and the creases have gone soft, the case will hold it but it will not bring the edges back. Nothing I know of does. Better to know that going in than to open the box expecting the case to fix it.