I ordered a cedar brown Camp draft yesterday, from the hattery. Got an email this morning from them, telling me that while inspecting the hat, before shipment, they noticed a flaw in the felt. They have more in their warehouse and will ship me a better one, on Friday. I was happy that they notified me and and inspected the hat before shipment. I thought it was proffesional and considerate to notify me. I will continue to do business with them.
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I really like Akubra's Bluegrass Green. I'm primarily a "jeans and tee shirts" kind of guy and most of my shirts are black, green, and dark to medium blues, and I think the Bluegrass Green goes well with them. And on those days when it's raining hard enough for me to wear my olive drab M65 field jacket it's definitely my go-to hat. That being said, I can't say I've ever worn mine with any of my brown jackets--that's what my Taupe Fawn Campdraft is for--but I don't see a problem combining those colors.
John Lofgren Monkey Boots Shinki Horsebuttt - $1,136 The classic monkey boot silhouette in an incredibly rich Shinki russet horse leather. 
Grant Stone Diesel Boot Dark Olive Chromexcel - $395 Goodyear welted, Horween Chromexcel, classic good looks. 
Schott 568 Vandals Jacket - $1,250 The classic Perfecto motorcycle jacket, in a very special limited-edition Schott double rider style.
How do you know that your head just didn't get bigger?@D00R - I'm sorry to hear you're disappointed with your Campdraft, but I suggest you give it some time. Akubra's felt can sometimes be rather stiff at first--when I received my Taupe Fawn Campdraft it was stiffer than my other Akubras combined and, like you experienced, the brim snapped right back up the first several times I tried to snap it down. Time, handling and wearing the hat, and "working" the felt by creasing and re-creasing it will make it softer, but it probably won't become as soft as a vintage or custom hat for at least a couple of decades.
With regards to shaping the crown and brim, steam and/or water will definitely help. On all of my Akubras my process was the same--give the crown a rough shape dry, spray it with distilled water until it's good and wet, let it sit for a few minutes to allow the water to soak into the felt, refine the shape and eliminate those "rumples" (at that point mine all shaped almost like clay), then--and here's the hard part--set it aside and let it dry at room temperature, checking it occasionally to make sure it's holding it's new shape. Depending on how well you saturate the felt this last step can take quite a while, but using an artificial heat source to make it dry faster can cause the felt to shrink, resulting in a tapered crown. I also sprayed the entire front half of the brim in order to "convince" it to stay snapped down, and that worked well for me (though it took two or three treatments on my overly stiff Campdraft).
The size should take care of itself as long as you wear, and more specifically sweat in, the hat. The moisture and sodium in our perspiration slightly dehydrates the leather Akubra uses for their sweatbands, which causes them to shrink somewhat. All of my Akubras started out so oversized that I could pull them down until my head filled the crown, but after wearing them every day they all shrunk down in less than a week.
You can use spacer material behind the sweatband to make the hat more comfortable while this happens, but I just wore mine loose until they all shrunk down to a nice fit and conformed to the shape of my head.
Actually, I don't. But if that were the case, I think I'd have to eventually order a larger size.How do you know that your head just didn't get bigger?
