Wine or water skins

[JonM]

New member here. Anyone have any experience they would like to share on water or wine skins? Bags for holding liquid. I'm not looking for stuff on harder pieces like flasks, jacks or costrells. My google-fu is weak today. Thanks in advance.

Jon

[Tipus]

New member here. Anyone have any experience they would like to share on water or wine skins? Bags for holding liquid. I'm not looking for stuff on harder pieces like flasks, jacks or costrells. My google-fu is weak today. Thanks in advance.

Jon

No need for google.

You got it right here :

http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=3084

[JonM]

Thanks. I've seen that one and appreciate the link. I've done bottles and flasks like that before but was hoping someone here might have worked on the more bag like containers usually called skins. Thanks for the effort.

Jon

[Jordan]

Try a search for Bota Bag. At least thats what they called them in my hippie-dippy days.

[UKRay]

Thanks. I've seen that one and appreciate the link. I've done bottles and flasks like that before but was hoping someone here might have worked on the more bag like containers usually called skins. Thanks for the effort.

Jon

Jon, I made a few touristy type waterbags in Morocco back in the early 70s out of poop tanned hair-on goatskin but they weren't too successful. I suspect this is because the leather I was using was too porus/was scraped too thin/generally wasn't suitable for the purpose - but oh was it cheap! They didn't hold water for long I know that...

At that time I was working leather with a nice old Arab guy who made some quite good big ones out of a dead camel we found in the desert (I can still smell it...); but even they tended to leak a bit. The evaporation kept the water quite cool so perhaps it was a design feature rather than a fault.

I seem to remember that the trick he used to get things watertight was to roll the seams to get a triple thickness which he then stitched with unwaxed linen/cotton thread that I believe swelled up when it got wet. He also made a sort of leather spout like an elephant's trunk that could be folded over a couple of times and tied with bits of thong. It was a very long time ago and to be honest my memories of that time are a bit slightly les than lucid. <grin!>

My most recent offering was a leather cover for a pukka mountain expedition plastic waterbag which was definitely my most successful water carrier to date! - What did you want to know?

[UKRay]

For those of you amused by such things here is a couple of pictures of the camels. We found the dead one by the side of the road. It looked like it had been hit by a truck - I bet that surprised the driver! The hippy beads are a reminder of a wonderfully misspent youth!