What's the turnaround time for alterations with Optimo?

[Benzadmiral]

I think my green Churchill Open Road clone took about two weeks -- they cleaned the hat, trimmed the brim and rebound it beautifully. (They also rebashed it into a teardrop, which I had not asked for, but which I ended up liking. Be sure you state clearly what you want.)

Come to think of it, I have a grand Resistol OR clone that could use a cleaning and a restitching of the sweatband, and a green Crofut & Knapp teardrop fedora that could use cleaning and a sizing down. How far down can a hat reasonably be resized? From 7 1/4 to 7 1/8, say?

[hatophile]

I think my green Churchill Open Road clone took about two weeks -- they cleaned the hat, trimmed the brim and rebound it beautifully. (They also rebashed it into a teardrop, which I had not asked for, but which I ended up liking. Be sure you state clearly what you want.)

Come to think of it, I have a grand Resistol OR clone that could use a cleaning and a restitching of the sweatband, and a green Crofut & Knapp teardrop fedora that could use cleaning and a sizing down. How far down can a hat reasonably be resized? From 7 1/4 to 7 1/8, say?

Benz,

In my experience going up or down one size is not too much of a problem. More than that, you can run into issues with brim and crown size. Graham has resized several of my hats both ways and worked out fine.

[Benzadmiral]

Glad to hear it. I picked this C & K up at Meyer the Hatter about 15 years ago, before I was very experienced with hats, and I could never get it to fit me right even with padding. The other night I flipped down the sweat in it and saw that it was sized 7 1/4 -- way too big for me! But I like the way it's bashed, its narrow though not thin ribbon, and the width of the bound brim. If Graham could get it down to 7 1/8, I could probably pad it to fit fine from there.

'Twould be a good idea to send them off now, while I can't wear them due to the nasty heat. By fall (read: December, here) I'll have a whole new stable of lids.

[hatophile]

Good idea. I just had a passel of fur felts cleaned and blocked to be ready for the cooler weather here.