Roman \"Canteen\"

[tiberius aemilius naso]

Great tutorial, Steve!

[Cavok]

The stopper is held on with the leather thong mate....when it is full of wine you need this sort of security you don't want to waste any!

[jvrjenivs]

Although I like the look of your new water bottle I would suggest to not use it. Although you used 'veggie tanned leather' and a bees-wax coating as well, there might still be health threatening chemicals in the leather (as a result from the tanning) which might easily taken out by sealing with the wax and get mixed up with your water/wine.

[Cavok]

Hi Jurjen
I allways give them a double dose of wax .
The second dose comes after at least 24 hours filled with water.
You can tell if there is anything leaching out as it has a brown coloured residue.
For the first few fills the is a waxy honey taste.
The waxing process soaks into the pores of the leather completely, you can see it chage colour as the wax soaks in.

I have used them for many years with no ill effects.
I have also used them for storing grain.

Also only clean them with waterand then let them dry naturally.
If worried insert a plastic bag liner.

[garrelt]

No funny taste with the water or wine, and no plastic liner in my leather canteen.
Ones in a while I put the same tablets in my canteen as the ones used for cleening plastic/false teeth.
Kills at least some bacteria.

Health risk of chemicals, can be, all depends of how large the quantities are.
What to think of cooking in brass pots?
copper oxide, lead, zinc, tin.
Or sitting at a campfire with cheap(impregnated) or wet wood.

Thanks for the tutorial, saw where I went wrong in the making proces.

[Draconis]

How would the Romans have tanned their leather? Would chemicals be present in what they used? I suppose to be historically accurate, you might want to start with untanned hide and tan it according to ancient methods. Plastic bags and all might work well, but the finished product would be unlike what they had. It sounds like a lot of work, but the objections to leather and chemical poisoning, would not have been a problem for the Romans if their tanning methods did not include those chemicals.

[rzienta]

While I can appreciate the desire for historical accuracy, the reality of health concerns outweigh the historical aspects. The Romans used lead, but I would be recluctant to use it for eating or drinking utensils. The Romans didn't know any better; we do.

[Cavok]

Now lead is definately different.
Along with mercury etc!.

I would love the time to be so historically accurate also....but I don't so I do what I can with what I have,

and for reference from Leathernet:

Tanning



Ancient methods of tanning

In ancient history, tanning was considered a noxious or "odiferous trade" and relegated to the outskirts of town, amongst the poor. Indeed, tanning by ancient methods is so foul smelling that tanneries are still isolated from those towns today where the old methods are used. The ancients used leather for waterskins, bags, harnesses, boats, armor, quivers, scabbards, boots and sandals. Around 2500 BC, the Sumerians began using leather, affixed by copper studs, on chariot wheels.

Skins typically arrived at the tannery dried stiff and dirty with soil and gore. First, the ancient tanners would soak the skins in water to clean and soften them. Then they would pound and scour the skin to remove any remaining flesh and fat. Next, the tanner needed to remove the hair fibers from the skin. This was done by either soaking the skin in urine, painting it with an alkaline lime mixture, or simply letting the skin putrefy for several months then dipping it in a salt solution. After the hair fibers were loosened, the tanners scraped them off with a knife.

Once the hair was removed, the tanners would bate the material (see below) by pounding dung into the skin or soaking the skin in a solution of animal brains. Among the kinds of dung commonly used were that of dogs or pigeons. Sometimes the dung was mixed with water in a large vat, and the prepared skins were kneaded in the dung water until they became supple, but not too soft. The ancient tanner might use his bare feet to knead the skins in the dung water, and the kneading could last two or three hours.

It was this combination of urine, animal feces and decaying flesh that made ancient tanneries so odiferous.

Children employed as dung gatherers were a common sight in ancient cities. Also common were "piss-pots" located on street corners, where human urine could be collected for use in tanneries or by washerwomen. In some variations of the process, cedar oil, alum or tannin were applied to the skin as a tanning agent. As the skin was stretched, it would lose moisture and absorb the agent.

Leftover leather would be turned into glue. Tanners would place scraps of hides in a vat of water and let them deteriorate for months. The mixture would then be placed over a fire to boil off the water to produce hide glue.

Variations of these methods are still used by do-it-yourself outdoorsmen to tan hides. The use of brains and the idea that each animal (except buffalo) has just enough brains for the tanning process have led to the saying "Every animal has just enough brains to preserve its own hide, dead or alive."

Soooooooooooooo looking at it that way......bit of beaswax tastes ok.

[Draconis]

Hmmm sounds like a project best left to the pro's. Are there tanners though, who tan without hazardous chemicals? Speaking of the taste of beeswax... as an aside, I have a drinking horn made from a cow's horn, much like you see in the viking movies. Horn contains some not very nice chemicals in it which should not be drunk. What was suggested to me was to line the inside with beeswax. It seals off the horn and beleve it or not, if you fill it with cheap beer, the wax imporves the flavor of the beer. I don't see why it would not do likewise for water in a leather water bottle.

[Cavok]

Its a messy, not nice process no matter how you do it.

[M. Demetrius]

A good while back, I semi-successfully tanned a few deerskins. It was messy and distasteful beyond my imagination. In the end, I had little better than rawhide, which, of course has it uses, but not so great for a shirt. Anyway, scraping dessicated fat and decaying muscle from the skin, removing the hair, figuring out what to do with the various nasty bits afterwards, and getting the smell of all that off my hands made it clear to me that was somebody, anybody, else's job. It's no wonder that the tanneries were located on the fringe of or outside of towns.

Having said that, there are chemical kits you can buy that make the first part of the process a little easier. For example:
http://www.tandyleatherfactory.com/en-us...tions.aspx

But it's still hours of hard work, and that's all there is to it.

[Redguru]

What weight leather did you use for the canteen and do you think a split or suede leather would work since you are using beeswax to seal it?

[Cavok]

Hi Joe,
The leather is 3-4mm....don't know what weight that would be for the US way of doing things.

I would not use split leather or suede myself as that for me would not look right.
I also doubt the Romans wold have had split leather in use for stuff like that.
It would probably seal with the wax though.

[Tarbicus]

Aurificina Treverica do a nice metal Etruscan/Greek canteen/flask (Tarquinia, 4th-2nd C BC).
http://www.replik-online.de/de/shop/site...optionen=Y

There are also gourds. I have the same as the one on the left.
http://redeaglecreations.net/images/pic138.jpg

[Redguru]

Thank you, Steve, I'm going to run with this design as it is both simple and elegant. I am making a couple gourd canteens, as well. Your design might very well become my marching wineskin

I'm wondering, why wouldn't paraffin be a better choice than beeswax, for the interior of the canteen?