Americanflat Folded Flag Display Case Review: Living With It on the Mantel

My father's burial flag sat folded in a dresser drawer for sixteen years. Earl Thorsen was Navy in the Korean War years, and when he died in 2009 the flag came home folded into a triangle, and I put it in the top drawer of my bedroom dresser because I did not know what else a man does with it. It stayed there through a new roof and two rearranged living rooms. Then in January a friend of my brother's died at 81, and a few days after the funeral I stood in his widow's kitchen and saw his flag still in the plastic sleeve from the funeral home, sitting on her table next to the salt and pepper. I went home, opened that drawer, and the Americanflat folded flag display case is what I ordered the first week of March. Twice. One for my mantel and one for Marge Nowak's bookcase.

I should say plainly that I did not serve. I was too young for the draft and I have never worn a uniform, and the men I buy for can tell the difference in about four seconds. My brother Ray did four years in the Navy as a machinist's mate. My job at the Thursday morning coffee table at the post is to make the coffee and set up the chairs. What I can tell you is what a case looks like after eight months in a house, and what it took to get a folded flag into one.

How I've Used It

I ordered two, in one order, my money, the first week of March. One went on the wood mantel over the brick fireplace in my living room with my father's flag inside it. The other I drove to Marge's with Ray on a Saturday, and we found the spot on her bookcase together, next to a photograph of Walt in his dress blues. Neither flag had ever been in a case. Mine had been in the drawer since 2009. Hers had been in the sleeve on a kitchen table.

Eight months is long enough to know how an object behaves in a house. Mine has been dusted, bumped, moved twice when I cleaned the mantel, and looked at by whoever came through for coffee on a Sunday. Nothing has loosened. The front has not clouded. The flag has not shifted or sagged inside the triangle. I have not had to touch it since the day I set it up, and that is the only test I really care about.

Marge's has held up the same way. She dusts it with the sleeve of her cardigan, which I would rather she did not do, and it has come through anyway. She has mentioned it to me four or five times since March, usually when somebody stops by the house.

Ray has seen mine maybe a dozen times and has never said much about it, which from him is approval. He did pick it up once and turn it over to look at the back, and he asked whether the front was glass. I told him plexiglass. He nodded and set it down, and that was the end of it. Dale asked where I got it. I told him, and I do not know whether he ever ordered one.

What Americanflat Actually Sends You

The case measures 26.4 inches wide, 13.2 inches high and 3.3 inches deep, and it is built for a 5 by 9.5 foot burial flag folded into the traditional triangle. The frame is engineered wood and the front is plexiglass rather than glass. It can sit on a tabletop, a mantel or a shelf, and there is hardware in the box if you would rather hang it on a wall. It weighs 3.8 pounds empty.

I want to be plain about the materials because the listing is plain about them. Engineered wood is not a slab of oak. It is a manufactured frame with a consistent finish, and at this size it holds a true triangle with no gap at the three corners. Plexiglass is lighter than glass and it will not shatter if the case takes a knock, which matters in any house where people come and go. It also scratches. That is the trade you are making.

The triangle is the traditional shape for a burial flag and it is not decorative. A flag folded at a service comes out as a triangle with the stars showing, and a case built to any other shape would either crush the fold or leave a gap along an edge. Americanflat builds to the standard size, and my father's flag, folded in 2009 by men I never met, went in without a fight. That is the entire job of the dimensions, and they do it.

The 3.8 pounds is worth knowing if you plan to hang it. Three and a bit pounds is not a heavy object, but it is not a picture frame either, and you want a stud or a proper anchor. I did not hang mine. On the mantel it sits, and a mantel takes it without a complaint.

Getting My Father's Flag Into the Triangle

About ten minutes at the kitchen table, and most of that was being careful rather than working. A burial flag comes folded and you do not unfold it. You slide it into the triangle the way it already is, corner first, then settle it so the stars sit square in the opening. I used the flat of my hand rather than my fingertips, because a flag folded since 2009 has creases in it that I did not want to press out.

I laid the case on its face on a clean towel so I could work without putting pressure on the front, and the flag went in on the second try. First try I had it rotated wrong and the stripes ran at an angle. Ten seconds to lift it and turn it. If you have ever wrestled a shadow box with a stapled back, you will find this the easier job by a wide margin.

Ray did Marge's while I held the bookcase steady. Same ten minutes, same two tries, and he was more careful with it than I expected him to be. Then I set mine on the mantel, stepped back, and stood there a while with my hands in my pockets. That part does not go in a review column, but it is the reason I bought the thing.

Eight Months on the Mantel

A mantel is a hard spot in a house. Mine gets the morning sun from the east window, the heat when the fireplace runs from November through March, and the dust that nobody in a one story house admits to. The case has sat there since March and the front is still clear.

The frame has not warped. That was my real worry, engineered wood over a working fireplace, and it has not happened. The corners still meet. The triangle still reads as a triangle and not the low trapezoid that a sagging case gets after a couple of summers. I wipe the front with a dry microfiber cloth and nothing else.

Marge keeps hers on a bookcase at sitting height, and I think that is the better spot of the two. You can look into it. On a mantel you are looking up at the underside of the front edge unless you are tall, and at 68 I am not. If you have a shelf at eye level when you are seated, use the shelf and let the mantel keep the photographs.

Where It Falls Short

Plexiglass holds every fingerprint. I learned that the first week, when Ray picked the case up off the mantel to look at the back and set it down with his hand flat on the front. A soft dry cloth takes it off. A rough one will leave a haze in the surface, and unlike glass you cannot polish that out.

At 26.4 inches wide it needs a genuine shelf. It is not going on a narrow picture ledge or the top of a thin bookcase. Measure before you order. My mantel has about 40 inches of usable run and this takes most of the good part of it, and two photographs moved to the side table to make the room.

One more small thing. The front picks up a reflection from a window, and on a bright morning you will see the yard in it instead of the flag. Shift the case an inch or two along the shelf, or draw the curtain, and the problem goes. I moved mine about an inch and a half and it cleared up entirely.

And the honest one: engineered wood is not oak, and it will not age into oak. If you are buying this to hand to a grandson in thirty years alongside the flag, that is a different purchase, and I will get to it.

Eight months over a working fireplace, and the frame has not warped, the corners still meet, and the front is still clear.

The Solid Wood Question

I have never owned a solid wood flag case. I have read the listings, and I have put my hand on the oak case in the hall at the post where the charter hangs, and I know what the difference in material means. Solid oak is heavier, it can be repaired and refinished, and it is a piece of furniture rather than a frame. It also carries the price you would expect for that.

Here is how I would put it across a coffee table. If the flag is going on a mantel or a shelf where it will be seen and dusted and lived with, the Americanflat case does the job neatly and I have no argument with it. If the case is meant to be an heirloom that gets handed down with the flag, spend for wood and do not think about it again.

There is a longer comparison on this site if you want it laid out side by side. The short version is that I bought two of these, I have watched one of them for eight months, and I am not sorry. I would still tell a grandson to look at a wood case for a flag he means to keep for fifty years.

Who This Is For

This is for the family with a flag in a drawer, a closet, or still in the plastic sleeve from the funeral home, who has not known what to do with it. That was me for sixteen years and I did not feel good about it. It suits a mantel, a bookcase, a den shelf, or a wall if you use the hardware. It suits a widow, a son, a daughter or a grandchild who wants the flag where people can see it without turning it into a project. There is a piece on this site about ten reasons a flag display case honors a veteran, and it makes that argument better than I will here.

It works as a gift too, if you are the one carrying it over. I handed one to Marge in her front room with Ray standing in the doorway, and it was not a long conversation. She knew what it was before I got the words out.

Who Should Skip It

Skip it if you want solid wood in the house. Skip it if the only place you have is a narrow ledge, because it will not fit. Skip it if what you have is a flag folded to some other size than a 5 by 9.5 foot burial flag, since this case is built for that triangle and not another one. And skip it for a busy hallway where people brush past, because plexiglass in a traffic lane is a losing fight.

Skip it, too, if you are not ready to see the flag every day. That is not a small thing. Some men want it in the drawer and that is their business, and I am not going to sit at that table and tell anyone otherwise.