The making of a forester's backpack.

    I wanted to make a bentwood frame backpack that my personna could have used for a day hike. I started with the image of Otzi's bendwood frame. First I tried bending maple saplings. I warmed the sapling over a fire then wrapped it in hot wet clothes. I got pretty close with this technique before it snapped.

         

    You can just see the fracture starting on the top of it in the last photo. In the end I used a large piece of Bittersweet vine. I was not happy with the look of the wood after I removed the bark so I planned on covering it with thin leather.

    The next job was attaching a couple boards across the bottom to hold the hoop in place and give me something to attach a bag to. I had a deer hide that someone had given me that I had tanned and at the same time I had harvested some of the leg sinew from the deer. I used the sinew to attach the boards after smoothing them with a hand plane, and gouging a hole in the ends with a spoon gouge.

  I boiled some chunks of poorly tanned cowhide to make some hide glue. and attached a piece of book binding leather that I had.

                                       

    Next I made and sewed together the bag made out of the deer hide.

    To attach the bag to the frame, I braided some leather straps that I purchased. then finally I put on a loop and tied a small branch with a kink in the middle to use as a closure on the bag.

    In the final picture I also attached a couple braided leather thongs to the bottom board to I could tie on the rolled sheep skin. My hatchet also sits nicely in the straps.