e4Hats Veteran Cap Review: Worn Every Week at the Post

My brother Ray is 74. He did four years in the Navy, 1970 to 1974, a machinist's mate, and until this spring the only cap he owned was a plain ball cap with nothing on it. No branch, no flag, no embroidery. Just a blank cap gone soft as a washrag and pale along the sweatband. He wore it to Thursday coffee at the post. He wore it to the hardware store. He wore it to church on Sunday, which is its own kind of statement.

I am not a veteran. I was too young for the draft and I have never pretended otherwise. But I do the shopping in this family, and in the first week of March I ordered five things from Amazon in one order. One of them was an e4Hats.com Veteran Military Large Patch Cap, the Navy version, meaning the branch, since the same cap is sold for each service. It went to Ray that week. Eight months on, the blank cap hangs on a nail in the garage and the e4Hats.com cap goes on his head most mornings. What follows is what I have watched, what he has told me at the kitchen table, and the parts of it that do not suit everybody.

How I've Tested It: Eight Months of Thursdays

I did not wear it, and I want to be plain about that before anything else. It says what it says across the front, and I am not the man to wear it. Everything here is either something I have seen with my own eyes or something Ray has told me, and where the two disagree I will say so.

What I can report on is the use it gets. Ray is at the post hall on Thursday mornings at nine for coffee, and he helps run the monthly pancake breakfast, and he makes the run to the gas station most mornings for a paper and a talk with whoever is behind the counter. He is not a man who changes his habits. In eleven years I never once saw him reach for a different hat. Since March I have not seen him leave the house in anything else.

I have also handled it more than he has, in the sense that I have turned it inside out at his table, looked at the seams, and checked the corners of the patch more than once, because that is what I do with anything I buy for somebody else. He has hand washed it twice since March, in the kitchen sink with a little dish soap, and set it on a plate to dry overnight. Both times it came back to the shape it went in with.

One more thing about the test conditions. This is one cap, on one man, in one small town, worn at a post where four of us sit at the same table every week. When I say the men at the table liked something or did not, that is four men and no more. It is not a survey and I would not dress it up as one.

What the Patch Cap Actually Is

The listing calls it 35 percent cotton and 65 percent polyester. Six panels, a high profile crown that runs 4 inches deep, and a pre-curved bill 2 3/4 inches long. The back closes with a plastic snap, one size fits up to XL, and the whole cap weighs 4.8 ounces. It is imported, the pattern is solid, the fit type is regular, and the listing says plainly that it is not waterproof. Hand wash only, which matters and I will come back to it.

The front carries a large patch, a good deal bigger than the small embroidered marks you see on most caps. It is sewn down flat rather than pressed on, which is the reason I kept checking it. Ray's is the Navy version. The other branches are sold as separate options on the same listing and I have not handled any of those, so I will not describe them for you.

At 4.8 ounces it is light enough that Ray forgets he has it on. He has worn it into the house and sat down to lunch in it more than once, and I have had to tell him. Nothing about the build feels flimsy. The stitching around the patch is tight and even, there are no loose threads inside the band, and the bill holds its curve instead of flattening out the way cheap caps do after a month.

It also packs flat. Ray tosses it on the truck seat when he gets home from a long drive, and it comes up in the same shape it went down. That sounds like a small thing until you have owned a cap with a crown that folds into a crease.

What Eight Months Did to It

Nothing has broken. That is worth saying plainly, because I have bought caps before that lost their shape by August. The crown still stands up on its own when he sets it down on the table, and the bill has kept the curve it came with. The snap still clicks on the same setting it did in March.

The patch has held. That was my one real worry, because a large patch is a large thing to sew down flat, and a corner that lifts is the first sign of trouble. I have looked at all four corners of it more than once and none of them has curled. There is no fraying along the bill edge either, which is where his old cap went first.

The fabric has softened, which is what cotton and polyester do with wear and two hand washings. It has not pilled and it has not gone thin. The inside band has darkened a little where it sits against his forehead, which is what happens to any hat a man wears every day, and he does not seem bothered by it.

The snap is the one part I cannot vouch for over years. Plastic gives up eventually. After eight months of daily use it is still firm and still holds where he set it, and that is as far as I can honestly report.

The Fit Question Nobody Mentions

The crown is 4 inches deep and it sits high. That is the whole of it. Ray has an average head and it sits well on him, but a high profile crown is a different look from the low slouchy caps a lot of men his age wear, and it took him about a week to stop noticing it was up there. Dale tried it on at the table in April. Dale has a broader head and wore it on the last of the snaps, and he said it sat fine.

The plastic snap is the part I would flag to anyone buying this as a gift. There are no sizes, just one shell that fits up to XL, and the snap takes up the difference. If the man you are buying for takes a small, he will be on the tightest setting and the crown will sit higher on him than it does on Ray. If he is at the top of the range, he is on the last notch and there is nothing past it.

The pre-curved bill is 2 3/4 inches, enough to keep the sun out of his eyes at the pancake breakfast without looking like a visor. The listing states that the cap is not waterproof, so a man who walks a good distance in the rain will end up with a wet head. That has not stopped Ray and it has not come up.

One nice thing I did not expect. At the hardware store in April a stranger stopped him and said thank you for your service. Ray is not a man who enjoys being fussed over and he got out of it in about four seconds. But he told me about it in the truck, which means it landed somewhere. A cap does that work without the man having to say anything.

Where It Falls Short

Three things, and I will take them in order of how likely they are to matter. The crown height is first, and it is a matter of taste as much as fit. It sits high and it looks like it sits high. Some men will like that and some will not, and no amount of eight-month reporting changes it.

The plastic snap is the second. It works, it holds, and after eight months it still clicks, but it is not a fitted back and it is not a metal buckle. It is the part most likely to give out first, years from now, and it is the part that will decide whether the cap fits the man you bought it for.

The third is hand wash only. Ray has done it twice, in the sink, and it is not a burden for him. But a cap that cannot go in the machine is a cap that some men will simply never wash. If the man you are buying for is that man, tell him when you hand it over, because he will not read the tag.

And one limit rather than a fault. There is no name on it and no way to add one. The patch is the same patch every buyer gets. Ray would have been embarrassed by his own name on a cap, so for him this is exactly right. If you are after something personal, this is not that thing, and you should know it before you order.

Eleven years he wore a blank cap. In eight months I have not once seen him leave the house in anything else.

Who This Is For

This is for a veteran who will actually wear a cap, which is not every veteran. Ray is out of the house most mornings and sees people he knows at the post and at the gas station and at the counter where he buys his paper. A cap is what he puts on to do that. If the man you are buying for is that man, the e4Hats.com cap does the job and it does it without asking him to say a word about himself.

It also suits the buyer who wants a gift that gets used rather than displayed. There is no ceremony to it. You hand it over, he puts it on, and a week later it has quietly become his hat. For a grandchild or a niece or a friend at the post who wants to give something a veteran will keep on his head rather than in a drawer, this is a straightforward choice. If you want to weigh it against the plainer flag cap first, that is a fair comparison to make before you spend anything.

And it suits the man who does not want to be fussed over. Ray has never been one to wear his service across his chest. A cap is different. It is a small thing, it is on his head, and it starts a conversation about once a month instead of every hour. He can take it off and be nobody again.

Who Should Skip It

Skip it if the man you are buying for does not wear caps. That sounds obvious and it is the single most common way a gift like this ends up in a drawer. I have watched it happen with other things, and no amount of good intentions fixes it.

Skip it if he takes a small hat size. There is no small here. The one shell that fits up to XL will sit high and tight on a smaller head, and a gift he cannot wear comfortably is worse than no gift. Skip it too if he wants a fitted back or a metal closure, or if he is particular about a low crown, because this is none of those.

And skip it if he has told you, in plain words, that he does not care to wear his service where people can see it. Some men do not, and they are entitled to that. Buying this anyway is buying it for you and not for him.