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Bag straps with no adjustment...
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Graybeard
posted
I am building a bag that will be used for a member of the common militia, circa 1750. Given the simplicity of the bag, it will not have the strap buttoned, buckled, or lashed..just a plain strap attachment. I have examined one bag done in this manner and found one side left long, and yet still sewn to the bags body...with no evidence of buttonholing. Over the years, I have also seen examples of similiar design on hunting bags...one strap left long.

Is this common ? And if so, for what purpose ?

Pease
 
Posts: 238 | Registered: 08 August 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Factor
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It's tough to tell if something was "common" based on extant examples, for there are so few actual items, and we know the population size in general.

As for purpose it's the same, probably, as when you use a buckle and leave extra strap. The person who dons the bag may need to adjust the strap, if not today, then perhaps in colder weather when many layers of clothing require the strap to be moved so the bag may be comfortably worn. Once the bag is adjusted for the cold weather clothing, it will remain at that length until the winter is over, thus the strap is sewn into place, and then the owner would restore the strap to the shorter position in the warmer months, and sew the strap back in that position.

LD


It's not what you know, it's what you can prove
 
Posts: 3843 | Location: People's Republic of Maryland | Registered: 10 November 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Graybeard
posted Hide Post
Guess I am commited to it, as it is now sewn in place.. Big Grin

 
Posts: 238 | Registered: 08 August 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Greenhorn
posted Hide Post
Just a thought .. could the excess be tucked under a belt to keep the bag from flopping about ? I guess not if was outside of a coat.

Don't trust what don't rust
 
Posts: 49 | Location: Ohio | Registered: 22 December 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Free Trapper
Picture of Montour
posted Hide Post
There are just not enough surving bags to make even a best guess.

An well to be honest, I dont trust anything that has been published on shot pouches. If you applied the scientific method to the study, it would be a very unhappy shotpouch book buying public........
 
Posts: 150 | Location: Right where Im standing | Registered: 07 September 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Graybeard
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There are a few... like you said. The sad thing is that unless you exactly cookie cutter an original, there are folks that will call you on the carpet. Not here, as it seems contemporary intepretations are acceptable. One of the nicer things about this place... Wink
 
Posts: 238 | Registered: 08 August 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Free Trapper
Picture of Montour
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Hey if someone calls you on the carpet, use your position as Booshway to prohibit their participation or even attendance.......
 
Posts: 150 | Location: Right where Im standing | Registered: 07 September 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Greenhorn
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I love truly authentic gear and I really admire the people that take the strides to find the info and present era correct gear and clothing but since I do no public events and am into this simply for the fun of it, I take a lot of liberties with the gear that I make. Like I once told a friend in a model train shop It's my railroad..I'll pull an atomic reactor with a steam engine if I have a mind to..lol That being said I sometimes fear of 'watering down' the field so to say, so I pretty much keep my projects to my own and visit the voo's and such to enjoy the lifestyle by those who truly understand this time period. God Bless 'em all for keeping the spirit alive !
 
Posts: 49 | Location: Ohio | Registered: 22 December 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Graybeard
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by Montour:
There are just not enough surving bags to make even a best guess.

An well to be honest, I dont trust anything that has been published on shot pouches. If you applied the scientific method to the study, it would be a very unhappy shotpouch book buying public........


Luke,

Would you consider the Lamuel Lyman belt bag correct? That seems to be the best documented. I have never seen the Gusler bag, but from some accounts that is another bag that seems correct.

Pease
 
Posts: 238 | Registered: 08 August 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Greenhorn
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Just curious, how many original shot bags do you think exist compared to how many are needed to write about them? And what scientific study method isnt being applied by those that do?
TCA
 
Posts: 29 | Registered: 04 May 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Free Trapper
Picture of Montour
posted Hide Post
Well TCA,

There is your book, and Madison Grant's book on pouches and Steve L's Book of Buckskinning article, and yes Im biased and like Steve's article better than all the rest since he did the best at not backdating pouches to what the hobby consumer wants IMHO. Also a couple articles in MB and ML and what else? So not counting Native items, there are what 3 for sure undisputedly documented Anglo American shot pouches from the 18th Century?

Now any other object from the period I can pull up peer reviewed journal articles on the objects. On shot pouches, self published books and hobby magazine articles. Does not mean that any of that is not without worth, but it does mean that it has not been addressed in the professional manner that just about every other material culture artifact from the period has received.

Is there something I have missed? I have trolled JSTOR and Project Muse for any scholarly journal articles and come up with nothing for the Anglo American Shot pouch. I even used, Shot pouch, shot bag and hunting pouch, all within quotes to take advantage of the Boolean langague paramaters of the search engines.

With that I cant even find a conservation report on a hunting pouch, I can find out how to stableize an 18th Century quilled bag, and chemical analisis of the dyes used on the skin and the quills but not something "Anglo." So yes Im kinda unhappy with the treatment of the subject.......

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Montour,
 
Posts: 150 | Location: Right where Im standing | Registered: 07 September 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Booshway
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Dating early pouches with no provenance will always be debatable and open to interpretation. We all know that. None the less, the materials used, patterns, designs and construction techniques used to make them are definitely available to study. Thus I feel that many educated statements and generalizations can be made by those that are involved in actively studying them.

So personally, I wouldn't throw out the baby with the bath water just because we cant prove a pouch to be from the 18th century. Especially since in a lot of cases we also cant prove that it isn't.

A lot of folks, myself included, are passionately trying to study, document ,save, recreate and then teach some of the old techniques used to make hunting pouches in an effort to preserve the craft itself and advance the contemporary culture of the long rifle.

tc

This message has been edited. Last edited by: T.Albert,
 
Posts: 486 | Location: Illinois River Valley | Registered: 02 January 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Pilgrim
Picture of Spotted Bull
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interesting points one and all...

Taking all of this into account, and the seeming lack of "professional knowledge" on the issue at hand..

How can someone look at a pouch, bag, leather container for holding items, etc. and then say...

"Well that just ain't correct!"

I look at them and say..."And you were there to see all the bags made during the 18th and 19th century?"

I look at it like this. There are some pictures and drawings of old bags out there. I like to look at them and pattern most of my work "after this bag". But its still my work. The folks that see a picture and make an "exact copy" of that bag, that's great! But someone has made that bag already...probably more than once!

And someone says, well they don't have buckles on those bags or rings on those bags...well I can almost guarantee, that is someone had an old iron or brass ring laying around, and he thought that it would look nice or make carrying easier, or some other excuse, he would have used. Well, you've never seen it? Maybe it didn't make it all the way to the 21st century.

Most all of the bag makers around now days, that display their wares on the internet, know how a bag is made, historically. Its still leather, sewn with some durable thread that's probably waxed, and it may or may not have a flap or a strap adjustment or fringe or pockets or welts or gussets or decoration or lining or a patch knife or a hole for your short starter or whatever else you can think of.

OK...I'll get off of my soap box.

Lets just make bags. If you make a bag and at least one person other than the maker likes...well then you've accomplished something.


It is pitiful when a man lets his ego push his intelligence beyond his ignorance.
 
Posts: 55 | Location: Waxahachie, TX | Registered: 20 December 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Booshway
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Amen...making and using hunting pouches is indeed the bottom line...
tc
 
Posts: 486 | Location: Illinois River Valley | Registered: 02 January 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Hivernant
Picture of Willis Creek
posted Hide Post
Here's a question for ya: how many guns were purchased with a bag and horn? That is, how prevalent were shop made bags, as apposed to home made?


"touch not the cat without a glove"
"Much of the social history of the western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good. . ." Thomas Sowell
 
Posts: 143 | Location: South of the Arkansas, on the slopes of St. Charles Peak, Colorado territory | Registered: 25 January 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Free Trapper
Picture of Montour
posted Hide Post
Wow, seriously, if one does not make pouches in the modern day you cant say diddly about pouches in the period?

That Do'er vs librarian shtick got played out on another forum and didnt end so well for the do'ers cause no ammount of modern doing anything is gonna make an old tyme mountainy man

So remember folks, yes they did use toliet paper, even scripts from plays, and the ax is used to break open the bones to suck out the marrow.......
 
Posts: 150 | Location: Right where Im standing | Registered: 07 September 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Pilgrim
Picture of Spotted Bull
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by Montour:
Wow, seriously, if one does not make pouches in the modern day you cant say diddly about pouches in the period?

That Do'er vs librarian shtick got played out on another forum and didnt end so well for the do'ers cause no ammount of modern doing anything is gonna make an old tyme mountainy man

So remember folks, yes they did use toliet paper, even scripts from plays, and the ax is used to break open the bones to suck out the marrow.......


What the heck are you talking about? I really don't think that I mentioned anything about being an old tyme mountain man. I said I was a bag maker. and I never said I was a librarian.

And what does, Didn't end too well for the do'er, mean anyway?

Im simply pointing out, "What difference does it make if the bag is historically correct or not!!" You weren't there to see all the possible combinations, so you really have no way to know if it or not.

Make bags and be happy. Quit sweating the small stuff.


It is pitiful when a man lets his ego push his intelligence beyond his ignorance.
 
Posts: 55 | Location: Waxahachie, TX | Registered: 20 December 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Graybeard
posted Hide Post
I would say this, about all that... Smiler

A bag that is made correctly... Right materials, sewn in a traditional manner, that closely copies period architecture, and is finished and sealed with the same early formulations...

Trumps,...

Some of the perfect copies of the very few original bags that look like perfect copies until you realize they are built using the wrong leather, wrong thread, wrong stitching patterns, are tied off wrong, use wrong dyes, and are finished in something akin to bowling ball wax.

I know this because that describes some ( reads most) of my early bags. Big Grin

Through study, asking questions of folks ( Montour was one of them )... I eventually did a 180 degree turnabout to attempt to keep at least my leatherwork more or less on a traditional approach.

The funny thing is...the two militia bags I posted up above are some of my best work in that regard. They are not copies, but then again...I think they fit the era as they are meant to be representative of a Mass Bay Colonial common militia bag.

That said, I truly drool over the modern style bags of todays contemporary makers. How they can blend the old traditional work into these stunning interpretations, is simply amazing.

Pease

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Pease,
 
Posts: 238 | Registered: 08 August 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Greenhorn
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Pease...your pouches look great. To address your initial question about how common was it to have a long strap left on one side of the bag, I will brave this answer...based on pouches Ive seen, it wasnt very common. but as has been pointed out theres no reason your pouch cant be that way...the proof is in the pudding and you pouch turned out very nicely...

This info is old hat to many Im sure, but in an attempt to establish our own little pow-wow of scientific discussion, I also want to post this about the Lyman bag from the auction tag when it was offered for sale:

Historic Revolutionary War Leather Bullet Pouch Used by Lemuel Lyman in the Battle of Lake George The brown, handcrafted two-compartment leather pouch. Handtooled with floral motifs. Pouch contains several items of documentation including a newspaper clipping from 1886 containing the following quote: '...Mr. Lyman was in the act of firing at an Indian when a ball struck him. It passed across three of his fingers and struck his breast passing through a leather vest three thicknesses of his shirt and his Bullet Pouch, which was providentially in that place and half buried itself in his body. 'The pouch also contains a small single blade antique pocket knife with and antler scales from another member of the same family. Condition: Leather showing age with minor surface flaking, seam separation and missing one belt strap. A small bullet bole is present in pouch. Pocket knife showing heavy wear and age patina. Items of provenance contained in pouch showing age yellowing, creases and seam separations.

This description has always made me wonder if this was actually a belt pouch that he was carrying stuffed into his shirt? It sounds like, and actually looks like an English style gentlemans belt pouch to me, in fact it states that its missing a "belt" strap, not part of a shoulder strap, and there is no evidence of shoulder straps ever being attached...The Gussler bag looks very similar, but is made from recycled leather that Wallace Gussler believes to be "Russian" apholstery leather perhaps salvaged from a seat covering...conversly it does have holes in the back apparently where shoulder strapping was sewn on and has no evidence of belt loops...

Except for the remaining belt loop on the Lyman pouch, as far as I know, both of these bags are now missing any straps they may have had, but are still important examples of early American rifle pouches even if based on English examples...

One more question...can anyone identify the "small bullet" hole in the Lyman bag from the bullet that perthe story passed through it and into Lemuel's breast? Thats always confused me too. Where is it and why is it small...

Im offering up these questions only for the sake of discussion and not implying that I have any preconceived answers...its just an interesting topic.
tc

This message has been edited. Last edited by: TCA,
 
Posts: 29 | Registered: 04 May 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Greenhorn
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as long as i use period correct materials and methods my attitude is if i thought of it someone else must have done too.as to shop bought bags i would think as money was tight for
most people they made there own or had there wife,girlfriend,squaw,mistress,or friend make it.after all it's not rocket to make a basic bag.a lot of makers these days make great stuff but i think sometimes it bares no resemblance to the the gear an ordinary guy from the 18 cent might carry,accouterment making is turning into an art form in it's own right these days.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: doctorsyn,
 
Posts: 19 | Location: england | Registered: 17 October 2012Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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