[Bjorn Hagstrom]

[Leo Todeschini]

I used to make leather drinking bottles, they do take more time than people want to pay for so I stopped.

I suspect the problem is that your leather is too thin.

The step by step is this.

Cut the bottle halves from 3.5 to 4mm vegtan leather and sew with linen thread, not synthetic. Soak them in water overnight. Get a bag of very fine very dry sand and open the neck of the bottle and fill it up as much as you can. Take a flat ended wooden rod the same diameter as the neck opening and ram the sand down, refill and ram until you cannot possibly get any more in. The leather will balloon out during this process and then leave the rod in place until the leather dries so that the neck stays round.

It will dry enough in a couple of days and then remove the rod and tip out the sand, knock it about a bit and enough loose sand will come out.

Leave it to TOTALLY dry out in airing cupboard or radiator for a few days. This is important.

Next get some brewers pitch -available from www.traditionalmaterials.co.uk . The stuff Dan stocks at trad mats is black, and is oil based. Coal based pitch is carcinogenic. In other countries brewers pitch is a different colour and is tree based - I have not used this. Brewers pitch is safe for lining water tanks etc. roofing pitch is not. However personally if drank out of a bottle for a few days a year I would not have concerns about this, but that is my choice.

Heat up enough pitch to totally fill your vessel and using a funnel pour it in to about an inch below the neck. It should be just below smoking heat. The air bubbles that form on the inside of the leather slowly wet out and rise over a couple of minutes and the pitch will bubble a little. At the same time the considerable heat of the pitch will harden the leather and shrink it. As it shrinks, the pitch level wil rise and use a wooden stick to swirl the pitch around the neck and push it onto the surface here as it has not had as long to wet out as the body of the bottle. Just as the pitch looks like it will overflow, quickly lift the bottle and tip the pitch out.

Leave it upside down for a while until the pit h starts to string, then turn back vertically and smooth down any drips. Allow to cool. Once cool if there are any strings of pitch on the outside place in a freezer and after a few minutes take it out and ping off any strings, any residual pitch can be wiped away with cellulose paint thinners though it will leave some staining,

Dye.

The stopper will bind if rammed in too hard or left for days on end, when you have finished using it remove the stopper. A smear of Vaseline also helps.

My friends and I have used leather vessels for years and are not dead yet. They are good for water and will not taint the taste, beer and cider are also fine, strong gin and tonic leaves you with a black stripe on your lips so I guess is not recommended ( pitch and g&t that is; g&t is highly recommended).

The automatic hardening process during manufacture makes for a tough bottle and I know an empty one dropping from a table will have no problems, a full one may crack, but then you dry it out and put it in the microwave for 10 seconds check to see if it is soft, if not back in, check and so on until the pitch is soft, the put it back in for 10 seconds more and your problem is solved.

What irks me is that after all that, people thought £45 was expensive....

On a slightly different tack, I had a TV job a while back where is was asked to make cuir bouille for a job and I of course said yes. Without knowing how. On the drive home a chance conversation with Peter Johnsson sparked a thought and by the time I got home I was sure I had cracked it.

I am afraid that I am going to have to be tantalising here and not give the full story, as I have some plans to eventually make some bucklers or cuirass or some such, but basically treated leather 4mm thick caused a bolt from a 250lb cross bow to ricochet without penetrating at point blank and I took a piece cut at 45degrees during processing and used it like a heavy knife to hit and cut slivers off a piece of pine.

[G. Freeman]

[G. Freeman]

[Leo Todeschini]

Stretching back to my religious education lessons at school I seem to remember a phrase from one of the new testaments about old wine in new skins or the other way round. This was explained to me by my teacher and what the explanation of the meaning was is long passed. But he referred to wine skins as the stomachs of animals.

Now I am not saying that he was right or that a religious education teacher knows about this stuff directly, but it does strike me that a bladder is very thin whilst a stomach is much thicker and ultimately would make a tougher container.

I have no experience of either.

Tod

[Kel Rekuta]

I favour leather costrels and bottles lined with brewer's pitch. The black stuff used to be available in the US but the maker dropped it in the 1990's. Food grade Montan wax (black) was the hardening agent. It was still in regular use in the brewing industry when aluminum kegs were common. Since stainless eclipsed aluminum in that industry, pitch became redundant. (according to what the salesman at the wax manufacturer told me in 1999)

The JAS Townsend product is highly refined "fat pine tar" sweated out of a pine species particular to the south eastern USA. It is used commercially to coat candy and pharmaceuticals but is available in small quantities from Townsend. It is a very light amber colour with a higher melting point than beeswax. It doesn't go soft in the summer sun like beeswax and has the slightest pine scent. It tolerates moderate alcohol but doesn't seem to like long term spirit storage. Hard forming the leather on a last tends to eliminate shrinkage when the hot pitch is swirled around inside. Otherwise, Tod's method is spot on. Listen to him.

Back to the OP though. From what I've read a variety of wooden or ceramic canteen shapes like the metal one mentioned earlier seems to be the alternative to leather vessels. Whether wooden ones were coopered or hollow turned, I think steady use made sealing them unnecessary.

Some links to late medieval drinking vessels may be found here:
http://www.larsdatter.com/canteens.htm