Cyclin' caps are one thing unique about cycling. Everyone has a baseball or truck driver cap (well, okay, maybe not a truck driver cap). Most anyone with a cycling cap, however, is a cyclist. Even though a helmet is a good idea, the cycling cap isn't "old hat". The cap is intended to be worn under a helmet, doesn't come off at high speed or in wind, and can be stuffed in a pocket. In all, it's useful -- very useful, despite being somewhat of an anacronism.
I've made a few cycling caps -- or tried to. The first ones were 3 panel but I didn't make them long enough. I made a split 4 panel out of blue and grey contrasting material, that came out okay altho the brim was smaller than one would want... I used a plaid wool jacket liner material to make a 4 panel one, as I wanted a winter cap somewhat thicker than the wool Surly cap I have from The Bike Stand. 4 panel single point, like my Surly, unlike the traditional 4-panel design where the tops of the panels have slits for extra shaping. The brim is plain cloth, no insert. It came out cool...
I've got a few cycling hats, some I wear regular, some I don't. One of the "nice" ones I don't wear that much is the "fat man" cyclin' hat from The Bike Stand bike shop. I only have one so I try to keep it clean. Same goes for my Orange Cinelli cap and my 4 panel Surly, the surly is okay but it's expensive. I have two, and of the two, the red strip one seems burlier, so if i wanna wear a wool one I got with that.( gotta get a 2nd one just because...) Mostly I wear the old bike stand hats, which are yellow and red, because i have a few, several put aside to keep neat, and a few i wear riding under a helmet where they get rained on and dirty. I also have a Colavita cycling team cap, funny story on that, I was riding thru a neighborhood and a bunch of cyclists going fast passed me. Then later that day I was passing by the other way, saw one of them had dropped his hat. It had been run over but was unharmed, more or less. I washed it and there you go!. There is a Rossin/Lotus cycling cap that is clearly "vintage" which I picked up at the 2009 Tour of Somerville from a vender selling odds and ends for cheap (I also got a red wool jersey for ten bucks)
^ Rossin-Lotus cap I got on Memorial Day '09
Indy had it right; you can't go on an adventure without your hat. My fav's so far out of my do-it-yerselfers are the ones made out of jersey material. Not cotton jerseys but the sort of stuff they make sports shirts and bike jerseys out of. I made a dark blue one and an orange one with a blue and red bill. The blue one has three panels, with the seams going longways -- two sides and a middle part. The orange one started with just two sides, but they were then split to give a 4 panel design. The top of the brim is dark blue; the bottom red.
On these hats I used a piece of thick cordura nylon from an old backpack as a brim stiffener. They wear well under helmets and I left enough extra length so that I can tug them down over the tops of my ears in the cold. I took a handful of thick winter jersey material -- such as is used in leg or arm warmers -- and made myself another 4 panel hat on the same lines as the orange one, but out of much warmer stuff.
Back in the 80's the local shop had caps printed for them. Red and yellow and they say "Bike Stand" on them. Cool. I've got like 5 of them.
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