Haradir wrote:Very nice and well thought out!
Thanks so much
Here's the next update:
I made a vague mention that I was making some blanket roll straps over here:
https://www.ranger.budgetauthenticity.o ... 644#p47440 I had actually started making something frame-pack-ish (only I couldn't figure out how to make that work with a cloak) when I saw this video (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3KCVTxW2Hc) by Brian Grubbs, that he followed up with a much more detailed video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNL20sE36CY&t=376s and I have to say, I was so impressed by how good this idea is, that I abandoned the previous project and cut up the materials to make a swag instead, here's what I've ended up with:
Dwarven Swag
the theory is simple, the dilly bag (green bag) is attached to the top of the blanket roll at the point of the shoulder strap (that's shorter than normal), some weight is on the users front so it's more balanced that a standard backpack, bulky items like cook-pots don't have to go inside the blanket roll and things like water bottles can be more easily accessed through a slit in the back of the dilly bag without the need to stop to unpack. For me, the best selling point of the system it that it works perfectly with a cloak:
and for a bit more capacity my snapsack can be added:
Dilly Bag
the traditional dilly bag is a simple thin linen or cotton sack (I don't know if the slit is a traditional feature or if it's Brian's invention?) and the principle is that it's just tied around the strap, I had to modify the design a bit to make it waterproof for the British climate. The options for material were waxed canvas or thin leather, I used waxed canvas because the leather I have would probably have been to thick, although I still had to change the pattern a bit to cope with the bulk of thicker fabric. What I ended up doing was making the base of the bag rectangular instead of the traditional circle because the fabric was to stiff to sit comfortably and stood up in a cylinder, kind of like a barrel, even if I only had soft things inside, the rectangle is 10†x 4â€. Then instead of it having straight sides I had to taper it up to the top to make it thin enough to tie off, even then it was to stiff to directly tie around the straps so I made a leather piece with a D-ring to feed it through then secure it with a knot. If I wanted it a few inches longer I can pull it through the D-ring up-to the slit and put a stone in the end to stop it pulling back
for an idea of capacity I showed the things I had inside it on the above pictures (bag of tent pegs, cooking pot and a pair of wool trousers) and there was still quite a bit of room
leather work
the shoulder strap is 2†wide (different leather to the other straps because it's what I had and shopping is tricky in lock-down) and adjustable, everything else is 1 1/4â€. I've mimicked my belt with the tooling pattern, it's intended to have come from the iron hills since a bed roll is probably something Iodo would have brought with her.
I was going to sew the shoulder strap and the dilly bag fastening to a single piece of leather to thread onto the bedroll strap, so the dilly bag would always be on the left, then after more thinking about it I decided I might end wanting to change it around for reasons explained in the next paragraphs. So instead I opted for the two things being separate, then I quickly found that this didn't work because leather is slippery compared to Brian's linen straps and they just slid to opposite sides of the blanket making the whole thing feel loose. To fix this I had to use my local LARP suppliers solution for stopping things sliding around on a belt (
https://darkbladeuk.co.uk/sliced-bread?search=bread) to trap the two straps together. The whole thing results in quite a bulky fastening to the strap which I was a bit worried would dig into my back, fortunately the weight of the blanket pulls it away from my back so I don't feel it, lucky
The issue that's discussed a little in Brian's second video (and in the comments) is if it's possible to do archery wearing it, usually because it's easy to take off I would imagine that if it was necessary for me to shoot a bow, I would just drop it, and I don't carry a bow with kit anyway so it won't ever come up, but I still like to add the “what if†scenario when designing kit where weaponry (that I'm not aloud to carry in the UK) is involved
after a bit of experimentation I've proven that it is perfectly possible to shoot but only if the dilly bag is over my right shoulder. The catch is: that's opposite to the way it needs to be to have my bocksten cloak so the split is on my right side to keep my
theoretical war-hammer hand free, meaning that I might want it ether way around depending on what weapons i'm
theoretically carrying and what clothes I'm wearing
You might also have noticed the random D-rings on the shoulder strap, this is so if I take it all apart, tie a rope between them and adjust it longer it can still be used as a standard bedroll strap:
because of lock-down this is all untested at the moment, but walking around the house and garden it seems ok and I don't think I'd have a problem with carrying it more heavily loaded and for longer distances