The big change which came with the Web Equipment, Pattern 1937 was the replacement of cartridge carriers by the Pouch, basic. (Yes, that's Quartermaster-speak, and while they didn't have computers, it did suit organising in alphabetical order.)

The actual pack was still the Patt. '08, and it wasn't until 1st April 1946 when that was "retired". All they did was change the name.

So the original fitting instructions for W.E. Patt. '08 (PDF file) would still apply to the Pack. Since the pack itself is essentially a rectangular sack, it cannot be much simpler.

One of the features of the Mills Equipment Company webbing equipments was that they could vary the width of the webbing straps in the weaving process. So the wider sections on the Braces, which spread the weight on the shoulders, were all part of the one. The company which produced webbing in Canada were not able to weave this feature.

In many ways, the W.E. Patt. '08 set the standard for the two World Wars, and up to the 1960s. The basic design didn't change, even though details did. Unfasten the waist belt, and the equipment did not fall off. But it could be quickly removed and put on again as one item, almost like a waistcoat. The Mills Equipment Company supplied many countries, as well as the Empire, and it maight be taken as evidence that their designers got things right.

I never in a million years would have thought that it was essentially a flat wrapper with straps to hold it together.

The things you learn on Making Light!

Wikipedia has to say for haversack,
"The name 'Haversack' originates from its usage to carry 'Havercake'. Havercake was a rough type of bread simply made from oats and water, with the addition sometimes of yeast to bulk it out. Oats were the staple food of the poor, especially in the textile districts of the north of England, during the privations caused by the Napoleonic Wars. Havercake was made in the form of a thick biscuit as a convenient way to take food to the factory for the mid-day meal, and the haversack was the bag it was carried in. This system, using havercake carried in a haversack, was also used widely by the military for the individual soldier to carry his rations. The Duke of Wellington's Regiment was nicknamed the 'Havercake Lads' because the recruiting sergeants used to display a piece of havercake held aloft on a bayonette, to signify that food would never be a problem if enlisted; a great encouragement to recruiting when the general population was starving."

The entry for "Haversack" in Wikipedia is rather too American. The earlier bag-and-strap is echoed in the Mills system by the way in which the "haversack" could be slung on the hip when the "pack" was worn, but they were essentially different sizes of the same sort of item, later being renamed the "small pack" and the "large pack". In "Fighting Order" just the haversack was carried. Other armies still had the traditional haversack, sometimes called a "breadbag". In some cases it could be attached to the waistbelt.

The W.E. Patt. '08 haversack was 9 inches tall, 11 inches wide, and 2 inches deep. The Pack was 15 inches tall, 13 inches wide, and 4.5 inches deep.

The W.E. Patt. '37 haversack with 10 inches tall and 4 inches deep, giving a little over twice the volume. Partly, this was to carry the water bottle inside the haversack, rather than strapped to the outside.

The haversacks could be either worn on the back, or below the waist belt, on the left hip, attached to the ends of the braces.

All three items, when carried on the back, were intended to have their weight chiefly supported by straps attacked to the cartridge carriers or basic pouches, meaning they were quite low on the back. This seems to have conflicted with the traditions of a smart and soldierly appearance followed by sergeants, which sets these items higher and, it was eventually realised, didn't really work. It was OK for marching and drill, but backfired in combat situations.

(It was post-WW1 that drill sergeants introduced all the foot-stamping and high knees into parade drill. They only got away with it because the infantry no longer had to march everywhere: motor transport was taking over.)

Your Particles link to on the forging of antiquities is to a friends-locked LJ entry; most readers will be unable to follow it. (Me included.)

Jacque: Small, check; tidy, check; compartmentalized, check. It could only be more Dutch if it were watertight and floated.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEHAvVelUtw&feature=relmfu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqvGY3xZvkM&feature=relmfu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhwBhUNNMMQ&feature=relmfu

Thanks; that was fascinating!

Will I be seeing you at Minicon?

Do _not_ get this moose started on the subject of "Satchel, Signals", of which most people think there are only a couple, but the range went up to at least 12 (plus variants). and is currently giving me a headache.

Meanwhile...

Ah, the Rolykit. I have used one, and I'm not all that impressed. The primary disadvantage is that in order to reach the innermost compartments, you have to unroll its full length, which takes up a lot of linear table space — if you have a table.

And, once the glue from the webbing to the plastic fails, it no longer has proper hinges and you have to carefully close the innermost segment so that it meshes properly (which isn't automatic by laying against the ground like the others).

Most of the time, I use a LL Bean school bag for carrying large loads on my back. It doesn't fit terribly well because I have a quite long torso. But it does the job, even tho the "hip" belt actually fits more around my ribs than anything else. I'd need about 12" more of padding along the shoulder straps to get the hip belt to actually sit at my hips. Either way, it falls into the "great bloody sack" school of backpacks, and it works quite well.

My bike bags are similar. 2 Novara panniers, for a total of 40L with absolutely no pockets beyond the main ones. Why no pockets? On a bike, you have between 2 and 6 bags, by default. You can sort stuff. You SHOULD sort stuff. Into different bags... not into pockets. For me, the usual sort is large items go into the large bags, tent goes on my rack, and small/personal items go into my basket.

For everyday use, I use a messenger bag aka haversack aka musette bag. If it's your only bag, it should sit quite close to your body, with most of the load resting in the curve of your back. This leaves the load basically sitting on your pelvis, and for light loads, it works pretty well. Somewhere in the 15-20lb range, a single strap bag in this style will get pretty uncomfortable... if the bag is uncomfortable, it tells you you're carrying too much, and you should have picked a different bag if nothing is optional.

Most of the time, my messenger bag works better on the bike than a backpack, and it fits neatly into my bike bag system... so it gets used much more than the backpack. If it's coming with and I'm using the full suite of bike bags, the most delicate and fragile stuff goes in the messenger bag. I'm a much smarter shock absorber than anything else on the bike :D. Food goes in the basket. Clothes and camp gear get sorted into panniers, tent goes on the rack still.

The 1928 pack seems to be coming from a quite different way of thinking, despite me using large chunks of really not terribly modern stuff for carting my gear.

I am sad that my hundred-dollar just-right bag might not last as many years as I want it to.

Satchel Signals was introduced to replace the leather "Bags, Telephone Receiver" and "Cases, Message Book, Mark V". It was subsequently renamed "Satchel, Signals, No.1" when more bags and carriers were added during WW2, was rotproofed for jungle use (and acquired nickel-plated fittings), appeared in green rather than khaki to match the Pattern '44 (jungle) kit, and soldiered (Sorry!) on into the 1950s at which point it acquired a NATO stock number, changed its name to "Haversacks, No.1" and continued in service until some time in the 1980s when it was presumably retired in favour of Nylon or other synthetic material.

As haversacks go they're quite small, being sized to take a hand microphone and headset, some paperwork, or whatever the user wanted at the time. They're also rather hard to find (in good condition), since they made an ideal lunch bag whan they appeared on the surplus market.

I hope you and Patrick both have an excellent time at your respective Easter celebrations! Perhaps I'll see you at Fourth Street, if I can manage to squeeze the budget hard enough....

So, that all came across well to me, someone who is basically ignorant of military practice. But now, seeing the actual gear itself? Wow. That is one impractical piece of equipment, especially under fire.

If I had the book I'd post some passages, but it was a library book and it's already back. My apologies.

And I did not know the origin of the term "haversack". Havercake, is it?

Yeah, same issue as trying to find an interior passage in your Torah scroll. What one needs is what would be to the Rolykit as a book is to a scroll.

Nevertheless, it's a fun piece of design—at least when one first pulls it from under the Christmas tree and unwraps it.

Diatryma @22: get either magically matching shiny material or iron-on vinyl and use that to make patches.

Go with an artistically-contrasting color. Make it look like a "design element." Retrofitting after the pack is constructed is a righteous pain in the butt; that said, I've had very good success using heavy nylon webbing to reinforce high-wear locations on my pack. Basically: it doesn't wear through. Use something equally robust, like heavy-weight high-strength kite twine to sew it on. (Which is a challenge, because the stuff is designed not to knot up, so tying off the ends requires creativity.) (Paradoxically, nylon web can be easier to sew by hand than on a machine.)

My current pack is +/- fifteen years old, and the denim is dissolving in place. But the nylon-reinforced corners and edges are still completely intact. (I put leather—recycled flight jacket—on the bottom for water resistance. That's held up reasonably well, too, but it's not a structural element.)

The classic BSA 573 haversack dates back into the 1920s and was made at least into the 1950s; I think there were versions around in the early-mid sixties before the framepack and daypack wiped it out. It is a rectangular bag with shoulder straps which clip on to rings on the bottom edge; there's also a series of rings up both seams of either side to allow a bedroll to be fastened in a U over the top and sides. I think it's a bit bigger than the military haversacks of the era but a little smaller than the 1956 pack.

Denim does wear out eventually. Depending on when you bought the denim tho, you might be looking at an Interesting Side Effect Of Offshoring.

At this point, almost all "denim" you buy is not actually a 2/1 twill made with 100% cotton yarns and a very weft faced weave and a typical weight of 10-15oz per yard. Instead, it's a much lighter fabric. It's not as densely packed with weft. Sometimes it's not even a 2/1 twill, sometimes not even a twill period. It frequently admits having between 2 and 10% spandex, and in at least some cases contains a substantial chunk of rayon that the manufacturer is not admitting to.

Rayon and cotton are very difficult to distinguish with most test methods, but rayon is not as abrasion resistant as cotton. It's a tricky bit of adulteration to catch, and I have no idea how to get the FTC to crack down on it. (they have cracked down on some methods of misleading consumers with rayon, but this particular issue is tough to address on no funding, and VERY profitable for the manufacturer)

I'm not sure precisely when the change happened, but the first denim with spandex was introduced at some point in the 1980s, and as of now it has almost entirely taken over the denim market.

If you have actual factual cotton denim, I'd expect 5-10 years of daily wear out of it, possibly more than 15 if you had 15 oz/yd denim and your bag's structure was very good. If you have something that is missing on multiple fronts for qualifying as denim, you might have fabric failure in less than 2 years even in bag format. As long as you use large patches to make sure to cover all possible weak spots, traditional denim will get another 3-5 years of wear. My mom would usually use both patches and sewing machine darning to buy time on my jeans. Done well in advance of a hole, you could potentially get lots more than 5 years via those methods.

If you're dealing with denim that doesn't actually meet the formal definition, I wouldn't expect to buy much extra lifespan from patching. You can (and do) weaken fabric by patching it, and if the fabric is the modern super fragile stuff, it might well start to tear at the patch's edges.

One was about a march they did during basic training, where they were supposed to carry "full packs". Many of the trainees had learned the ways of the army by that point, and so stuffed their packs full of crumpled newspaper instead of the required gear. When a rainstorm hit during the march, he was one of the few who had a poncho with him.

He also talked about how everyone lightened their load as much as possible once they got into combat, by discarding non-essentials. Early on he was his squad's bazooka man, but quickly managed to find a newer, more eager soldier to take over carrying it. I had the impression that their shelter-halfs and sleeping bags were often carried by trucks while they walked, with the result that they were sometimes without some of their gear for a day or two. He told me he reduced his excess clothing load down to a single pair of spare socks, which he carried inside his shirt, where his body heat would dry them if they'd gotten wet.

....Aaaah, so that's it.

I do feel pretty good about the fact that the bag's pretty sturdy other than the wear thing. It's just not as bulletproof as I wanted it to be.

It's just not as bulletproof as I wanted it to be.

For that you need Kevlar (and an outer light-resistant layer).

g,d&rvvvf

Don't laugh. The only pair[1] of non-winter, non-bed socks I own, the stop-at-the-ankle kind for running shoes, has Kevlar reinforcing at heel and toe.

Diatryma, perhaps you want to consider Kevlar cloth for the patch (unless there's no way to sew it on)?

[1] Everyone has texture issues, right? Mine involve wooly knitty things.

Simplicity 4391 view D is effectively the Russian Mapcase pattern. D needs a longer flap, but that's an easy alteration. You want either a tongue lock or a twist lock. As simplicity patterns go, 4391 is well written and doesn't veer off into WTFery. It does not have the extra pockets under the flap that the map case has, but those, too, are relatively easy to add as patch pockets. 4391 is still in print (i.e. Probably obtainable for $1-2 during one of the big box fabric chain store sales) and is printable from the simplicity website (for those in need of instant gratification.)

It's a good pattern - I've made a couple of netbook/tablet bags from it. Just ignore the garish fabric choices simplicity made for the sample photos.

Looking for pictures has been interesting as well, especially some of the delusional descriptions of knitted projects. The line "Learn tips and tricks for knitting this hip geodesic dome hat" is aching to be followed by a version of Hammett's "I was trying to count how many lies could be found in those nine words, and had reached four, with promise of more..."

Your suggestion of a tongue or twist lock sounds good to me--would a magnetic clasp be worth considering?

I'm not a personal fan of magnetic clasps, but that's mostly preference - mags can't withstand as much overstuffing as twists and tongues can, but they're best for one-handing. Modern mags don't usually come loose on the run and they're good at mate seeking, which twists and tongues can't do. I also spent too many years carrying floppy disks in my bag. (Yes, I know that my phone and memory cards and electronics will be fine. It's irrational, but having lost a critical term paper in the days of 3.5" and sneaker-net print centers, I remain a bit burnt. ) All three have costs and benefits that are mostly user preference.

All three install exactly the same way - they're heavy-duty brads with a washer on the backside. Magnetics are the easiest to obtain locally - all of the craft stores carry them. I use ahkwokbuckles.com for most of my hardware; they're reliable, good quality and ship quickly. Most sewists seem to like magnetics; I just grew curmudgeonly at an early age.

As for the garish fabrics... Um, yeah. Sewists be a strange and wonderful breed, in all senses of those words. (I'll try to get photos of those bags I've made.)

One last suggestion before the crafty derail ends - make a test copy first, from a recycled vinyl tablecloth or a small piece of pleather. That way you can learn your adjustments before you cut the lovely leather, and the (p)leather will differ from fabric construction. Simplicity uses a 5/8" seam allowance, which is extravagant for leather or pleather; leather doesn't heal, so ripping out seams is not pretty, et cetera. My email address works, and I'm happy to answer questions.

I shall have to dig it out and see.

But I'll still probably opt for making one, as this is sentimentally valuable.