Author Topic: First Bag made in Thirty Years  (Read 1453 times)

Offline thecapgunkid

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First Bag made in Thirty Years
« on: August 19, 2019, 12:28:47 AM »
Pig Bristles.  Finally found a bunch, tailored a wood knife to dress up hemp and linen thread and taper the ends so they would work with the pig bristles, made some summer hand wax two parts bees and one part pine COAD and dug up one of the awls I apprenticed with in 1975.  I still despise working with Pig Bristles…



This guy would go on my belt for use with a cartouche for trail walks, about the only matches I attend these days.  I have a photo of one of the dummies in Fort William Henry’s Lobby…the one supposed to be a Ranger…and I could not resist that geeky leaf pattern.  I wonder if it can be documented…


child of bear is called





Took about four hours to make.  I still don't know why ..."child of bear is called"...appeared in my preview.

Tight Stitches,
Capgun
AKA The Still River Cordwainer

Offline Brokennock

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Re: First Bag made in Thirty Years
« Reply #1 on: August 19, 2019, 06:14:13 AM »
Nice work. 4 hours? Total? That would take me 4 hours just to get all the parts cut out and holes marked out. You may not like the pig bristles, but they seem to like you.

Offline WadePatton

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Re: First Bag made in Thirty Years
« Reply #2 on: August 19, 2019, 03:36:48 PM »
I don't know a lot about bags, but yours looks great to me. 

The reason "child bear" or whatever bogus links often show up in our photo posts is because there's some sort of app riding the "add a picture" options we have.  As I'm not an HTML expert or web hack, I don't know exactly how/why but someone somewhere is "driving traffic" to their site by those links.

ALL WE HAVE TO DO is to look for them when we preview our photo posts and EDIT them out.   You can go back now and find the link in your post, delete it and it's gone. 

It may have to do with whatever licensing the forum owners took on to enable ALR to host photos instead of us having to use a remote host and then link to them.  It's a little pain in the derriere to delete them out, or to scroll past the nonsensical tags they always have on them, but it's way better than the way it was before.  So I don't complain, just try to help folks understand how to minimize their intrusion on our ALR world.  Cheers!  HTH

I'm going to post this over in OTBF so we don't blow up your bag thread on photo-posting discussions.
Hold to the Wind

Offline Marcruger

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Re: First Bag made in Thirty Years
« Reply #3 on: August 19, 2019, 04:51:12 PM »
Nice looking bag to my eyes!  Well done. God bless, Marc

Offline Greg Pennell

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Re: First Bag made in Thirty Years
« Reply #4 on: August 20, 2019, 05:33:40 PM »
Nice bag, Kid, and thanks Wade for the tip on the links. Those bug me.

Back to the bag...can you explain the “hog-bristling”?  You’ve piqued my curiosity...

Greg
“Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks” Thomas Jefferson

Offline James Rogers

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Re: First Bag made in Thirty Years
« Reply #5 on: August 20, 2019, 05:39:27 PM »
Good to see you back in the game. I have a select few bristles and hand thread left for waxed ends.

Offline thecapgunkid

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Re: First Bag made in Thirty Years
« Reply #6 on: August 20, 2019, 06:49:12 PM »
Thanks James.  Flattered that you read my posts.

gpennel...Back to the bag...can you explain the “hog-bristling”?  You’ve piqued my curiosity...

back in the day  cordwainers used bristles from the belly of hogs instead of needles.  The former because needles, usually needlepoint and embroidery, were hard to get and expensive and the latter because they were walking around on the hoof.  Besides, bristles had natural split ends.  If you tapered your thread to an extremely delicate and  fine point , had a good mixture of hand wax and a lot of patience, you could twist the thread into the crotch of the bristles' split, wind it around the bristle, tuck it through itself and stitch with it.
The trick was never to pull the bristle, but rather to get both bristles at opposite ends of your thread just far enough in the awl hole to be able to pull the thread end and squeeze the bristle.  as soon as it was started, a stitch was pulled closed by pulling the body of the thread.

Check out this YouTube to get the idea...

Hate it.  I don't do it well, and was taught to stitch with fine harness needles on the tapered thread.  It takes me way too long to get the combo right and I will slip the bond with the bristle about half the time.  That's a problem when being self taught on a technique and time makes that metaphysical conversion to money.  It probably helps if you are also a fly fisherman which I am not..

For some reason I got away with it on this project, but I will go back to needles for the balance of my off-site work.  There is an enormous difference when stitching with waxed,  tapered thread and finer needles on a finished product...holes are not as cavernous and smaller stitches are tighter.

I'll be at Fort William Henry Thursday Night and all day Friday, but will be doing mostly bottom work on some straight shoes so I won't be sewing unless somebody asks me about it..

Offline Greg Pennell

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Re: First Bag made in Thirty Years
« Reply #7 on: August 21, 2019, 03:57:49 AM »
Thanks for the explanation, and the video...fascinating!  (And way more work than I'm willing to do...I'll stick to harness needles!)

Greg
“Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks” Thomas Jefferson