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"I
buy my hides and skins and I
prepare them by my craft, and make them boots of varying kinds, ankle
leathers, shoes, leather hose, bottles,
bridle thongs, flasks and bougets, leather neck-pieces, spur leathers,
halter
bags and pouches, and nobody would wish to go through winter without my
craft."
- Archbishop Ælfric's
colloquy,
11th
century
In this sunny land, we sometimes find ourselves seeking water in the
summer months. Carrying water need not be a matter of hiding a plastic
Evian
bottle someplace out of sight. Water bottles (flackets) were made in
period (see above), and here's one easy way doing that.
Step 1: Cut your leather
The best leather to use for
leather bottles comes from the
"belly of the beast". This is because belly leather is very stretchy,
and this quality will serve us well. You can generally tell belly
leather at the leather shop because it is generally a long narrow
piece, with
one straight side and one wavy side.
- Four to six ounce leather is perfectly
fine for a flacket.
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Cut two pieces as shown, in a
sort of teardrop shape, with of course a
square end. The square end is where the mouth of the bottle will be,
and without
an opening you won't be able to get the water out.
- Now, what would be
the point of that?
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Make sure you add two "ears" to
the sides of the mouth, so you have
a way to suspend your bottle. These will be attached to some
kind of strap.
Score a line about 1/4" around
the edge of the shape (except for the
mouth). Also, score lines about an inch apart at about where you want
the neck of the bottle. Thus, the neck and the ears will each have
their
own sets of stitching.
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Step 2: Sew your leather
| Use an awl to make sewing holes
along this line. We used an awl that
has a sort of diamond cross-section. When you make stitching holes in
the leather, make sure that the points of the
diamond made by the awl do not line up, otherwise the thread will have
a tendency to pull through these weak points. Practice on some scrap
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- Do not make all of the holes at the same time - since
leather has
a
tendency to stretch (especially belly hide), what was lined up
originally may not be lined up when you get around to stitching. So,
make stitching holes as you go.
- Tie a pair of knots with the thread at upper corners of the
ears; these will help keep the two leather pieces "registered" to each
other as you proceed.
- Actually, this is a good place to start sewing.
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- We'll use a sewing technique known as saddle stitching.
This requires
two needles (and thread).
- Thread the two needles onto each end of about 6 feet of
thread.
- Start them in the first hole so each side has the same
amount of thread.
- Pass one needle into the very next hole, takes
up the slack thread.
- While you pull the first thread back
out of the way, pass the second needle through the same hole.
- Pull
this tight.
- Saddle stitching has the advantage of locking in
place,
if
you do it correctly.
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- When you come to the end of the seam, or if you are running
out of thread, stitch back a hole or two, and pass both needles out
from between the two pieces of leather.
- Tie these together tightly so the hole is hidden between
the pieces of leather.
- Use a large leather punch to
take out some of the leather from between the lines of stitching on the
ear. You can then cut away enough leather from the ear to make
suspension holes.
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Step 3: Soak your leather
That's right, just chuck it in
Jack's swimming pool!
Actually, a good overnight stay in a bucket full of water is the best
idea. We soaked ours for less than an hour, however, with good results.
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The flacket is already starting
to take shape, although it's a little leaky. On close inspection,
you'll find that most of the water is coming out from the very pores of
the leather. Relax, we have the cure for that. But first, it's time to
pound sand.
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Step 4: Pound sand
- After you've poured the water out of your flacket, pour
some
clean sand into it, as much as you can. Don't worry, you'll be adding
even more than t.
- Get a wooden dowel that about fits into the neck of the
bottle, and use it to ram the sand into the bottle.
- Start with the bottle in the air, otherwise you might wind
up deforming the bottom of the bottle in ways that you might not like.
- By poking the dowel around from different angles, you can
control which part of the bottle is deformed, and in which direction.
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- When you've packed just about as much sand as you think you
can possibly get into the bottle, use a hammer (this time on the
ground) to drive more sand
into the bottle.
- At this point, you should be getting a feeling that you're
making sandstone. Relax, the leather is stretching - and that means
more capacity - for you!
- Leave the sand in the bottle for a week. If you go back to
it and notice that you might be able to put even more sand into it, by
all means have at it.
- Note: You probably want to acquire more sand that you
initially thought you might need.
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Note: If you see that you need to
re-soak the leather and pound more sand, it's best to pour out all the
sand before soaking the leather again, since wet sand can take a long
time to dry, and may result in your leather rotting.
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Step 2: Dump your sand out
Without squeezing or deforming the bottle, dump the sand out of the
bottle. In order to get (most of) the last of the sand out, get a
narrow stick and scrape out the sand, expecially along the stitching.
Turn the flacket upside down and smack it with your hand, in the manner
that you would use on a nearly empty catsup bottle.
Note:
Any sand that remains will be sealed up by the
pitch/beeswax mixture, but do you best at getting out all the sand you
can.
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Step 3: Pitching
We used a mixture of 50% beeswax
to 50% pine pitch, available at this time from Jas Townsend and Son, Inc.
For water bottles, we are not using black tar pitch. The beeswax and
the pitch seem to complement each other in resistance to cracking,
etc., and should give your water bottle the ideal inner coating.
We simply warmed up a coffee can full of the mixture over a charcoal
fire.
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Caution:
The pitch will be hot as you pour it. Grip the leather bottle by the
"ears" using a pair of long pliers. You will need to get the bottle
about 1/3 - 1/2 full. Most of this will be poured back into the pot.
Try not to splash any pitch mixture on the outside of the bottle. We
used an ordinary kitchen funnel to minimize any mess.
Some of the pitch mixture may start to drip through the seams. This is
normal, and it should stop, as long as your seams are reasonably tight.
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Slosh the pitch mixture around
inside the bottle as you pour it out.
Try to get all the inner surfaces well coated. Watch it, the pitch may
still be hot!
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After you are sure that the
pitch mixture is cool, pour water into the bottle. Try not to wet the
outside of the bottle; this will help you to see if any areas of the
leather did not get enough of the pitch mixture - water will start to
seep out through the pores.
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If you look carefully at this
bottle you will see that water is starting to seep through a small
patch of leather. In a case such as this, you need to dump out all the
water and add a little more of the pitch mixture, taking care to coat
that area.
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Pour out all the water. Bring a
source of heat (a candle or a judiciously applied propane torch) to the
area of the bottle's mouth. The idea is to cause the pitch mixture at
the mouth to move deeply into the pores of the leather, so as to
provide a nice uniform mouthpiece.
After this has cooled, you can go ahead and carve an appropriate wood
or antler stopper, which should be tied to one of the bottle's ears for
safe-keeping.
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Notes:
In period, bottle makers may have made wooden molds to put the leather
bottles into while they were pounding sand. This would result in more
uniform shapes.
When your water bottle is empty, or any other time really, try not to
squash the bottle. It's not really resistant to these pressures. If the
worst does happen, the bottle can be re-pitched.
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