Possible bag

[Bill Mc]

I'm thinking about making one and wondering should I make it out of brain tanned deer or go find some regular leather?

The deer leather is real soft maybe not stiff enough. Or is that a concern.

I have plenty of the deer leather.

 

[Elnathan]

What do you mean by "regular" leather? Most modern leather is chrome-tanned and is not PC for anything prior to 1870, if that is a concern.

Also, the term possibles bag is somewhat ambiguous - technically it refers to a bag for general use, not for carrying gun stuff, but some folks use the term for a gun pouch and since you have posted it in the shooting accessories forum...Might be a good idea to clarify that point.

If you are talking about a gun pouch, most people past and present seem to prefer a stiffer leather than buckskin, usually bark-tanned, aka tooling, leather. OTOH, cloth also works pretty well for a pouch and that is no softer than buckskin, so you might end up really liking it. One variable to consider is size and design - a simple small pouch might work well with a softer leather whereas a larger pouch or one with a lot of pockets would do better with a stiffer leather, I think.

 

[Bill Mc]

I guess, "regular leather" would be, I think, vegetable tanned"

My "bag" would be for only the essentials for shooting my flint lock.

 

[azmntman]

I say go for deer, you have it, back in the day they used what they had.

 

My "bag" would be for only the essentials for shooting my flint lock.

SHOOTING BAG!!!!!

You don't put "possibles' in a flintlock. :rotf:

 

[MSW]

I would go with 5-6 oz veg. tanned cowhide. it's a safe bet that you own more than one muzzle loader. (if not, well shame on ya, and you better get to fixing your ML deficient situation) ... now, you need one bag per gun, and ...

there you go.. :grin: :grin: :grin:

by the way, if you don't already have TC Albert's book, here's a link:
http://www.trackofthewolf.com/Categories/PartDetail.aspx/49/1/BOOK-R18-CHP

good luck with your project!

 

[Elnathan]

I guess, "regular leather" would be, I think, vegetable tanned"

My "bag" would be for only the essentials for shooting my flint lock.

Well, I have only made two bags, one from chrome-tanned pig-skin and one from bark-tanned deerskin, so I don't have any direct experience with brain-tanned bags. Having said that, I recall reading something long ago discussing the use of brain-tan in a shooting bag to the effect that it was not a desirable material because it tended to deform and kind of wrap around what was inside it, making it difficult to get stuff out. I also note that virtually all the originals I can remember are made from bark-tanned leather, including a few that were made from salvaged materials (old boot). I suspect that there is a good reason for that. On the other hand, as I mentioned before, people back then and now have used cloth bags, which would seem to have the exact same problems as buckskin, quite successfully.

If you are aiming for PC, I think that unless you are looking at an Indian-made pouch, bark-tanned is probably the better choice. Even at Boonesborough during the hardest times they were making bark-tanned leather, IIRC, and even the Shawnee ended up with some after raiding the tanning pits, so it would be available even along the frontier, I think.

One thing you might try is to make a pouch out of some old jeans material or some other cloth with a similar flexibility to brain-tan, to see what works before you cut into the buckskin. I suspect that attaching the straps to the side of the pouch, as some originals did, would work better than the more common way of attaching them to the back. There is a very cool little pouch illustrated in LaCrosse's The Frontier Rifleman that is supposed to be made from "very soft deerskin" (no info on how it was tanned - for a long time I assumed braintan, but it could be barktanned) with a divider and a strap along the sides instead of the back, and a couple single-compartment bags, one in LaCrosse and one in Madison Grant with similar straps. I'd also avoid gussets - that first pouch I made with softish chrome-tan has a big wide gusset and tends to flop open. Brain-tan would be worse, I think.

Honestly, I don't think that anyone is going to be able to give you a straight yes or no answer - too many variables, and everyone has a different idea of what they want to see in a pouch anyway.

 

[crockett]

Well, as you have probably been told by now, the term "Possibles Bag" was something today's commercial bag makers used. The article was originally a hunting pouch or maybe even a bullet bag- the writings of the day sort of are confusing. There actually was a "possibles sack" but it was sort of a ditty bag with a shoulder strap in some cases and carried all your non-shooting gear.
ANY HOW.... :grin:
From my limited knowledge there are options. The soft brain tanned was likely the only style used by NDNs and probably common among long hunters. Bags were also made in the settlements. These would more often be thin, bark tanned leather (Tandy) with a similar strap. Today buckles are common on straps, original bags may or may not have had a buckle.
Fringe works best with the soft leather and the soft leather is quiet when stalking through thickets. The strap on the soft leather can be webbing or soft leather with a blanket backing. You need to "beef up" a soft leather strap in many instances. If you carry a powder horn on the same side of the bag, it can audibly bang against the bag while you walk. The soft bag has a lot of pluses. I'd add fringe along the bottom of the bag.
Since there is a lot of knowledge here, I'd go over all your ideas down to the finest details and await comments. Tell the time period and area of your interest as well. I've made a lot of stuff that wasn't pc- I should have asked more questions.

 

[Elnathan]

From my limited knowledge there are options. The soft brain tanned was likely the only style used by NDNs and probably common among long hunters.

Longhunters, as the term is generally used, didn't live among the Indians - they were frontier settlers on hide-hunting expeditions and neither tanned the hides themselves nor hung out with Indians (on whose land they were poaching), so it is rather unlikely that their equipment differed from the average frontier farmer.

As for the Indians: Speaking of the later 18th century woodland Indians, we know they made twined bags from various vegetable fibers (basically, cloth). Look at the Iroquois dude on the left: http://www.sightswithin.com/Benjamin.West/The_Death_of_General_Wolfe/Cropped.jpg
The Ranger is carrying a similar bag, looks like.

It is also not inconceivable that they also used commercially produced bags, as everything else - gun, powder, flint, lead, powderhorn, etc. - was bought from the whites. Indians also traded deerskins in vast quantities in return for, among other things, the cloth with which they made their clothing, so it is quite possible that it simply wasn't worth the effort to make a hide into buckskin and then into a pouch when the same hide could be traded for a complete bag.

There is one buckskin shot pouch still extant, from the raid on Deerfield, but it is of a rather different type than what we are talking about: http://s40.photobucket.com/user/nytrekker/media/originals/deerfieldslitpouch.jpg.html

 

[LaBonte]

With all due respect you need to broaden your knowledge about Indian made braintan bags. There are in fact several extant original native shot bags made from braintan - many from the Great Lakes and Upper Missouri regions dating to the first half of the 19th Century. The so-called octopus bags often made by the Red River Metis are just one example.

Secondly just because a bag is made from brain tan does not necessarily make it soft. I've made several bags over the years using smoked brain tan that were just as firm as veg tan buckskin which are based originals. Even with softer tanned hides the problem for many makers is that they do not pre-stretch the hides, which obviates the later stretching to a minimum. The softness of a hide is more due the type of leather (beef or deer) and the currying process rather the method of tanning.

Here's my old shot pouch made from stiffer pre-stretched brain tan based on those as picture by A. J. Miller in 1837 - it's lined but that is due to the fact I like a lighter color inside my bags when possible - a personal quirk.

This one saw 10+ years and beaucoup miles of use before I traded it off - got a new one in the makings.......

PS the horn is an original dated 1791 and 1825....

 

[Elnathan]

With all due respect you need to broaden your knowledge about Indian made braintan bags. There are in fact several extant original native shot bags made from braintan - many from the Great Lakes and Upper Missouri regions dating to the first half of the 19th Century. The so-called octopus bags often made by the Red River Metis are just one example.

Secondly just because a bag is made from brain tan does not necessarily make it soft. I've made several bags over the years using smoked brain tan that were just as firm as veg tan buckskin which are based originals. Even with softer tanned hides the problem for many makers is that they do not pre-stretch the hides, which obviates the later stretching to a minimum. The softness of a hide is more due the type of leather (beef or deer) and the currying process rather the method of tanning.

Hi, I was hoping that you and/or T.C. Albert would chime in (can't recall if Mr. Albert is on this board or not...)Thanks for pointing those out.

I wasn't intending to suggest that they were never used, just that it would not be good to assume that they were the only type used by the Indians, as Crockett suggested, and that I wasn't aware of any extant examples. I meant to add something to the effect that I was sure that buckskin was used at least sometimes, but it seems to have disappeared sometime between my mind and the keyboard...I did specify that I was talking about 18th century woodland Indians (and am compelled to admit that I was mostly thinking of the SE at that). I do think that a 19th century Metis bag isn't necessarily a good indicator of what an 18th century Cherokee might do - buckskin shirts weren't used down here save in the case of absolute necessity, but were common among the Metis, I believe - but they do confirm that buckskin pouches are feasible, which is probably of more interest to the original poster anyway.

Interesting point about stiffness or lack thereof. I knew that bark-tanned leather could be curried in different ways to get different results, depending on intended us, but it didn't occur to me that one could leave the hide a little stiffer during the breaking process on buckskin if one wanted - obvious in retrospect.

 

[Bill Mc]

thanks for all the suggestions.

Maybe making a shooting bag from the thicker neck or butt of a hide might work best.

If I do, I'll post a picture but I'm might slow on completing a project.

My shirt was a year long project-kinda hard to make that first cut. :grin:

 

[LaBonte]

Cutting out your bag along the back bone is IMO the best bet since you naturally have the least stretch. I cut my bag back out of the neck/spine section and the front just behind that.

 

[Staggerwing]

I just finished my first shooting bag with the help of TC Albert's book. He suggests, at least to start with, using 3-4oz veg tanned cow hide. So that's what I got. It was fairly easy to work with and for a first project, I think was the right thickness to use. I bought one of the economy sides that has brand marks, some holes, etc. Enough good leather to make a few bags out of at least. I enjoyed it and will definitely do more leather projects. Now I'm building a horn to go with the bag. It never ends! Always something to make which is alot of fun IMO.