Show ye olde style, while saving the earth by stopping the use of disposable waterbottles. Carry, the flask...
The flask is quite the fashion piece these days, just wait, soon ye'll see ye olde Lady Gaga wearing it... And nothing else... >barf<
Anyway, it's quite cool, and gets a lot of comments wherever you take it. So, jump on the train and make one yourself. This flask holds 3 cups of water (*or, 663 ml, or 23.4 fl oz) or if you prefer it can hold 23.4 fl oz of whiskey...
P.S. A note I forgot to add earlier. At first, the water stored in it for long amounts of time may get a leatherish/beeswax flavor to it. It isn't too bad, and it diminishes with use. When I make one I like to fill with water, let it set for several hours, and empty then repeat. this repeated for a few days will diminish much of the flavor. (I personally kind of like it, but some people don't).
The flask is quite the fashion piece these days, just wait, soon ye'll see ye olde Lady Gaga wearing it... And nothing else... >barf<
Anyway, it's quite cool, and gets a lot of comments wherever you take it. So, jump on the train and make one yourself. This flask holds 3 cups of water (*or, 663 ml, or 23.4 fl oz) or if you prefer it can hold 23.4 fl oz of whiskey...
P.S. A note I forgot to add earlier. At first, the water stored in it for long amounts of time may get a leatherish/beeswax flavor to it. It isn't too bad, and it diminishes with use. When I make one I like to fill with water, let it set for several hours, and empty then repeat. this repeated for a few days will diminish much of the flavor. (I personally kind of like it, but some people don't).
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Signing UpStep 1: Tools and supplies
Tools
- Sharp knife
- contact cement
- marking tool (I use a fine tip sharpie)
- two sewing needles
- overstiching wheel (for marking sewing points)
- edge beveler
- drill or drill press with small bit (I use 3/32" but one size smaller might be better)
- Optional - leather tooling tools (make it look cool!)
-
pattern
Supplies
- Heavy Veg Tanned leather (I believe mine was 10-11 oz)
- False sinew
- beeswax
- paracord (I use it for a shoulder strap)
- a wine cork
- lentils (or small beans, or something like that, you just need something to hold the shape for it)
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just a side note wouldnt embedding an o-ring into the stopper make it watertight ?
cheers
With modern ovens and accurate thermostats, it's far easier to bake the wet leather instead of trying to actually boil it. Instead of shaping it first and then soaking in beeswax, soak the tooled and sewn leather in water. Soak it until it stops bubbling and no longer floats. This may take an hour or more. When you take it out of the water it'll be very floppy. Be careful not to damage any tooling you've done! Pack it full of warm, dry sand until you can't fit any more in, then cork the bottle. place it in your oven at a temperature of about 150 - 170 Deg F. Carefully bake until dry. This may take some experimentation. Once cooled, dump the sand out and clean the inside and you have a cuirbouilli bottle. This can then be treated with a coating of beeswax for waterproofing (or brewers pitch, or liquid epoxy, or whatever you choose).
This technique permanently and rather radically alters the leather at a molecular level. It causes the tannins in it to polymerize, making the leather more like a plastic. It will not soften in hot weather or if left in a car. In fact, if you take it too far and harden too much, you can make the leather so hard it becomes brittle and will crack if struck. With some practice you can make anything from slightly harder but still a bit flexible, to so hard it's like a piece of wood.
Like I said, though, I haven't actually tried it yet.
To some degree, I think it comes down to your definition of irreparable harm. For some people, I'm sure making the leather no longer flexible at all is harm because they have no experience with truly hardened leather. Wax "hardened" leather is often still somewhat flexible. It's rigidity comes from the wax being hard, not the leather itself hardening. The tannin polymerization seems to require water in some way not fully understood yet as dry leather won't harden when baked. Probably for some others, they haven't practiced it enough and had little blobs of former leather that would shatter like cheap plastic. Or they didn't realize that water-hardening leather will cause it to shrink by as much as a third of it's original dimensions and so wound up with something tiny. Or they didn't use wet enough leather and it started to burn instead of hardening. All those things could be considered irreparable harm but don't necessarily invalidate the technique itself. They just prove it's not an easy art to master!
Another thought that occurs to me is I also don't know what tannage of leather they were using. I've never had a bad smell from leather in boiling water for a short time (though burning leather smells pretty bad), but I've only ever used standard vegetable tanned tooling leather. I can't afford real oak bark pit-tanned leather or anything like that. Perhaps the somewhat different tanning methods could produce unpleasant smells.That's just a guess on my part, though.
The technique is worth a try, if you wish to practice it some. You'll almost certainly ruin all your early attempts, though, so don't get discouraged! I know my first attempt at a gorget was small enough for a child and snapped in half with my bare hands. It took several tries to get a workable neck armour, but I wound up with something quite usable in the end. I wish I had any pictures of it to show you, but I stopped using it many years ago and lost it shortly after.
I have business pricing with Tandy, and just bought about 6 square feet of veg-tanned for $7.99. Most of those sites you can buy by the square foot, sides, splits, etc.
Oldanvilyoungsmith, I would recommend specifying that you used vegetable tanned leather for this project, if someone mistakenly used chrome tanned or latigo it wouldn't work very well. For experienced leatherworkers, it became obvious when you stamped it that you either used veg-tanned or rawhide, but for someone just starting it would be nice to know.
Other than that, this is an AMAZING idea! I'll have to try that sometime soon, just have to get enough beeswax!
My dream would be to become a mastersmith (one of the most accomplished knifemakers in the world) someday. I figure that haveing started making knives at 16, I might be able to do it by 40.
As a thought though, a saddle might be an interesting project, maybe in a year or two, I might mess around with one, be cool to have a handmade saddle for my dad's tennesee walker.
Thanks for the compliments, always nice to hear that other people like some of my stuff.
(P.S. if you want to see some of the knives and such that I make, take a look at my blog - eagleeyeforge.blogspot.com)
Is this your first bottle? (not including the shriveled-up thing in the last photo)
I saw you posted it on DFogg forums, that was awhile ago.
Greg
Stephen.
P.S. (for all otheres, we're referring to a knife makers forum, check it out if your knifemaking interested. Bladesmithsforum.com)
Question though. I don't have beeswax on hand. How comparable is paraffin? I'm going to order up some beeswax and pitch to mix up a nice coating but I don't want to wait to get started.
Stephen
and second question, why not just let the leather swell with water and seal the seams? wouldn't that keep the water cool as you carried it by evaporation?
Yes, I do put wax inside it. Thats part of the dipping. If you on't dip and pour the wax over it, you need to pour it inside it and cover the inside with the wax. If you get too muich in there, it will melt out, part of why you cook it. (carefully)
Question #2
I don't know, if it had a very very tight seam maybe, And as to cooling through evaporation, I have heard of putting a woolen wrap around flasks, and soaking those when filling.
I wish i had use for one of these - i really do, but i invested in a non BPA (so forth and so forth) drinking flask a few years ago. Maybe when it's not usable anymore i'll make one of these.
How easy is it to clean? It must get a bit yucky inside after awhile.
In any case this is a gem for all those live roleplayers out in the woods - they gotta love this. I know i would :)
Just a thought.