I received my hat jack from John Penman last week and this is among the absolute must haves for anyone who wants to keep or restore the perfect fit of his hat.
Here's two pictures of a prototype - I'll take pictures of my own, when my wife comes back with the camera.
John improved the hat jack by adding the same amount of taper to the outer edge as you'd usually have on the sweatband and I'm happy that mine has that feature too.
So, why and what? - All leather sweatbands will shrink from sweat and body heat if worn heavily. It depends on the leather how fast or slow this process will take, but it will happen. I've found sheepskin to be the leather that shrinks the fastest, followed by calf, then goat and finally even roo hide will shrink if only given enough sweat and heat. Now, you can get one of these standard stretchers on which you easily overstretch the sweatband by cranking it up and above the original size, thereby creating a front to back taper or you can wet down the leather and wear the hat until it's dry, to make it a little bigger again once it's shrunk. With the first method, you have to be extremely careful not to overstretch the sweatband (especially on very soft hats) and secondly you have to find something to place the stretcher on, while it's inside the hat. If you put the hat on the crown, the weight of the strechter will flatten the crown out. The second method includes some rather unpleasant wear for at least some hours.
With THIS hat jack here however, that's a COMPLETELY different story. You adjust it to your size with the help of a measuring tape, pull the lever so you can easily put it into the crown, then you push the lever back and thereby set the hat jack to your excact size. Thanks to the four "legs" you can now just put it on the table to stand there over night and the next morning, your hat will fit as it did when new!
Never any red mark on your head any more, never any un-comfortable wearing of too tight sweatbands and no need to send in the hat for a sweatband replacement.
I just for the life of me can't figure out why such a tool wasn't invented before, but thanks to John it now is and I cannot recommend getting one enough!
Regards,
Marc
Now...About the price.....
