Over the years I've made a lot of my own clothing and kit to keep me comfortable both in the UK on courses and on overseas expeditions. I find it a great way of getting exactly what I want, cheaper (most of the time), a great way of learning and pushing skills ever forward and when it comes to anything involving hidework you gain a new found appreciation of the effort involved to take it from start to finish. One of the things I often talk to customers about on things like the fur on or buckskin courses is that you'll never look at leather goods in the same way ever again - you certainly won't view them as expensive.
The area I find most fascinating if I'm just experimenting, rather than creating for a specific need, is the idea of hybrid technology or to put it another way "what if..." questions. These often pop into my mind when sat around a campfire with the team on a course or in the early hours of the morning when I wake up and my head starts whirring. The project I'm going to share below actually started back in 2018 when some good friends of mine offered me a long-haired goat skin when we were at The Bushcraft Show. It was fresh and taken straight from a goat they had sourced and prepared themselves but they didn't feel able to do anything with the fur. I readily accepted but was off to another work commitment so I went via home and dropped it in the freezer. Time passed...
Two years later we had lockdown and all the free time I could wish for, albeit with many other challenges, and it was time to process all the skins I'd accumulated. Now I must confess I'd forgotten all about the goat skin and as it wasn't labelled in my usual way I had to rip open the bag to find out what was inside. I don't mind admitting the heart rate went up several notches when what I thought was a human scalp came spilling out, memory soon kicked in and a I realised what was in front of me. There was a lot of problem solving that year trying to work out how I could do all the necessary steps without access to the woods or the usual resources.
The time and effort that went into that goat hide, to get it to a level I felt honoured the quality of the item, ran into well over a hundred hours. And this for me is the important part of the process - to create something amazing it takes hours and hours of hard graft. But then the exciting follow-up is, what do you make out of it when you're done? I always find it hard to cut up a hide or start a project as I want to make sure it continues to be honoured by making something that has been thought through properly and shows it off to the best. With this skin the intention always seemed to head towards being a bag, but the style kept changing.
When I say I give things a lot of thought let's fast forward to winter 2024/2025 and the decision was finally made - it was to become an Ötzi the Iceman Inspired Modern Hybrid Backpack. Basically the question was "What if Ötzi had better access to metal and the ability to form more complex shapes?" The starting point was the gift of an LK35 rucksack frame which very closely mimics the concept of the Ötzi wooden hoop and slatted backpack frame. I also found a massive canvas tarp, at a really good price, at the 2023 Bushcraft Show that came into the mix.
So here you have it, over 6 years in the making, with hundreds of hours of physical and mental making time logged - I give you The Ötzi the Iceman Inspired Modern Hybrid Backpack. An LK35 frame, canvas backed bag and long-haired goat skin front. The legs hug the sides and the neck forms the flap opening at the top.
