3 Meter Para Bellum
Handloader
- Apr 17, 2020
- 461
- 715
I have been curious about the idea of making my own canvas backpack for a couple years now so I decided to do some research trying to learn how it is done. It turns out canvas bags in general kind of fascinate me at this point. I want to try my hand at a few different things and decided to start smaller than a backpack.
Over the last four years I spend a lot of time grabbing tools to fix things and dragging them all over our property, trying to get through doors with my hands full, having to make multiple trips to get tools from one place to another, etc. Then when I started shooting my slingshot more I ended up using a stupid binocular case to hold my ammo and extras. Eventually I realized some sort of canvas haversack like I had seen would probably be really handy and much better than the nylon binocular case I was using for my slingshot.
I have never really used a sewing machine before so over the past four days I decided to make a haversack prototype out of a pile of junky canvas drop cloth I had laying around. Free test material to absorb all my inevitable mistakes. I accidentally messed up the bottom like three times, cut it, restitched it, then still accidentally got the wrong dimensions, but it went together. I made it longer than I meant to because I read my plans wrong, and I realized I need to learn the nicer way to finish the top edge of the bag at the seam. I would have done a cotton ribbon edge binding on the flap to finish the edges, but I don't have any at the moment so I just overcasted the edges for this test. On a real one I would use webbing for the strap, but paracord serves fine for testing. I think the design functions as intended, but I want to try a fully boxed bag design with test material for comparison.
I got plenty familiar with the sewing machine, which was good because I was slightly intimidated by it before, and it also gave me some time to teach one of my sisters some basic hand sewing.
Over the last four years I spend a lot of time grabbing tools to fix things and dragging them all over our property, trying to get through doors with my hands full, having to make multiple trips to get tools from one place to another, etc. Then when I started shooting my slingshot more I ended up using a stupid binocular case to hold my ammo and extras. Eventually I realized some sort of canvas haversack like I had seen would probably be really handy and much better than the nylon binocular case I was using for my slingshot.
I have never really used a sewing machine before so over the past four days I decided to make a haversack prototype out of a pile of junky canvas drop cloth I had laying around. Free test material to absorb all my inevitable mistakes. I accidentally messed up the bottom like three times, cut it, restitched it, then still accidentally got the wrong dimensions, but it went together. I made it longer than I meant to because I read my plans wrong, and I realized I need to learn the nicer way to finish the top edge of the bag at the seam. I would have done a cotton ribbon edge binding on the flap to finish the edges, but I don't have any at the moment so I just overcasted the edges for this test. On a real one I would use webbing for the strap, but paracord serves fine for testing. I think the design functions as intended, but I want to try a fully boxed bag design with test material for comparison.
I got plenty familiar with the sewing machine, which was good because I was slightly intimidated by it before, and it also gave me some time to teach one of my sisters some basic hand sewing.
