# Leather Bottles ![[image-20160910_231854.jpg]] These bottles were inspired by the leather bottles found in the Mary Rose wreck. The ship sank in blah blah blah and left behind many artifacts of the time. Among them are these leather bottles. Bottles pulled from the shipwreck are a bulbous shape, have two handles, and have the marks that show some basic tooling. It comes with a leather wrapped wooden cork. ![[mr-81a12218.jpg]] ## Construction 1. Determine shape of bottles and cut out bottle shape from a piece of chip board or other really stiff paper. This will be the template from which these are cut out on the leather. 1. The pieces of the bottle include two bottle shapes, and a 1cm wide welt that I added 2. Place templates on leather and trace shape with a tool to mark the leather. 3. Cut leather out using sharp scissors or utility knife. 4. Since this will be filled with water, I chose to use a double switch line over the large majority of the bottle. I poked all the holes with a fork tool and hammer. I made about five bottles at once so this was majorly time consuming. The saddle stitch takes forever. 1. Use contact cement or binder clips to temporarily hold material together while creating the stitching holes. It helps immensely to keep the welt and two pieces properly aligned. 5. After satisfied with tooling and stitching, bottles can be stretched. The stretching medium can be a variety of things such as sand, little stones, rice, etc. When I researched this project, I found that many people had good success with pearl barley. 1. Soak bottles with water, retrieve dowel and pearl barley 2. After bottles are sufficiently soaked, shove barley into the bottles using the dowel 3. Place champagne cork into the mouth of the bottle so it retains its shape after it dries. 4. When desired stretch is achieved, allow bottles to dry. This will cause them to retain their shape. 6. IF HARDENING, continue. 1. Hardening was an extremely delicate step in this process. I couldn't find consistent information online for how to harden and preserve the new bottles, so I had to do a lot of experimentation. See the [[Leather Containers#Bottle Hardening Experiment| Hardening Experiment]] section for much more detail. Read on for the process that ultimately worked really well for me. 2. Also, don't put leather in the microwave. It did not go well for me. 7. Heat oven to 180 F (It needs to be warm, but not over 200 F). 8. Gently melt beeswax in a double boiler (I used a sauce pan and empty soup can). 9. When oven is heated, gently place leather bottles in the oven on a towel on a sheet pan to warm them up. 1. Be careful: I burned the bottom of one bottle because I didn't put a buffer in between it and the pan, so it over heated. I mitigated this by using a dish towel and firefighting glove. 10. Remove bottles from oven and use paint brush to spread melted beeswax over the top. This will begin to turn the leather into a nice dark brown color. Rub excess beeswax off and return to oven. 11. Repeat 10. until the bottle is uniformly dark brown. It takes several rounds of this. 12. When finished, wipe down the bottle to remove all excess beeswax and hang somewhere to cool and dry. Leather will be quite hard after this. 13. After leather is fully cool, heat a mixture of pitch and wax in a double boiler. 1. If I was doing this again, I'd use a food grade (FDA certified) epoxy as the liner for the bottles, such as [Max CLR](https://theepoxyexperts.com/shop/casting-resins/hard-casting/max-clr-48-oz-epoxy-resin-food-safe-fda-compliant-clear-high-impact-coating/), since it's far more durable than the pitch and wax lining 14. Pour wax mixture into the bottle and tilt bottle around to spread mixture around the inside of the bottle and pour off excess (if there is any). 15. When interior is fully coated, replace cork and allow to cool. ## Commentary My bottles shown here are a very similar shape and have two handles. I used these blanks to practice tooling after I'd finished sewing them all together (a lifetime of poking holes and sewing) so they all have different designs. ![[1473117440510.jpg]] I don't have the source on hand, but I heard that many extant leather bottles that were found either don't have a welt, or only have a half size welt. I am unsure when the switch came to use a full welt on leather, so I'm not sure how to date mine. In any case, my research indicated that people generally recommend a welt on these bottles, since it helps provide some extra water proofing and rigidity to the bottles. It did produce a ton of extra work though. Welts are really fiddly by hand. The picture up at the top of this page shows one un-hardened bottle. The reason I didn't harden that one was because of the other interesting thing I read about these bottles - they may not have been hardened at all. Again I don't have the source for this, but some bottles from this period appear to have repairs done on them along with patches of leather sewn on. If the bottles were indeed hardened then these repairs wouldn't have been possible. The hardened leather I have feels like iron and would be impossible to repair in a meaningful way if it was pierced. Personally, I think the hardened leather looks and feels amazing. The dark brown is a very rich color and the hardened leather make it really durable and thus allows more comfortable use. I could paint or dye the other one, I suppose. ## Bottle Hardening Experiment I had quite the adventure learning how to harden these bottles. There are myriad resources online that showed different ways to potentially harden leather for use like this. None of the resources that I found worked for me mostly because of the constraints I was working with - small apartment, small budget, desire for more durability... Heating the leather in the oven helps cause the bottles to more readily accept the wax. It soaks in well to the leather and seems to bond with it. ![[IMG_20160908_195944.jpg]] One forum had someone who had a huge stock pot filled with wax that he kept melted for these kinds of things. That would've worked for me, but it was quite cost prohibitive. Some period resources talk about simply boiling the leather in order to harden it. Hot water does indeed harden leather, but seems to be better suited to armor leather that doesn't need an interior coating. It also didn't occur to me as being quite as durable as wax. Ultimately I decided to just use beeswax to harden it. Then I had to figure out how to heat the leather properly. I heard that actual boiling water would destroy the leather and leather doesn't do well above 200 F, so I knew I needed to keep the temperature below that. I'm not sure where I got the idea, but I first tried heating the leather in the microwave at short bursts. VERY QUICKLY, my leather bottle overheated and folded in on itself. It was a serious disaster. I didn't expect it to fail so hard and fast so I was very frustrated and threw it out before I took any pictures. In hindsight I wish I hadn't. It was a good learning experience. DONT USE A MICROWAVE TO HEAT LEATHER. On to the oven. I heated the oven to 200 F thinking that it wouldn't go above that. Unfortunately I forgot that an oven's PID cycle had some inertia and it overheated the leather bottle I had in there. See the bottle on the left in the pic below. It puckered the leather pretty substantially. This one I kept. Ultimately, an oven with a temperature set to 180 F seemed to be a great temperature to use. I think every oven is a little different, so it's definitely best to start low. I'm pretty sure a lower temperature will work just fine as well. One last thing, I used a baking sheet to hold the bottles so I could easily remove them from the oven. The first bottle I placed in the oven didn't have a towel to buffer between the heat of the sheet and the leather, so the bottom scorched pretty significantly. Towels and firefighting gloves seemed to work well to insulate against the heat. ![[1473574692143.jpg]] Almost finished! (This was the only one that truly made it through the entire process) Some inconsistencies in color can be seen, so it needs a bit more time in the oven and maybe a few more coats of wax. ![[1473518961619.jpg]] Testing the pitch and wax mixture on a different leather cup that I made. I mixed one part pine pitch that I ordered online with one part beeswax. I heated it the same way I did the wax and used a brush to paint it on the interior of the cup here. It smells very piney (I liked it) and coats really nicely. ![[image-20160913_145342.jpg]] # Costrel This project was never finished, though I put in a substantial amount of research and time into it. While I was finishing up the stitching and figuring out the best way to attach the ends to the main body, our basement water backed up pretty horribly and caused several months of work. This project was set aside and sadly never picked back up. I'd like to finish one some day because a friend originally asked me to make these and they are very interesting bottles. ![[IMG_20180703_233824.jpg]] ![[IMG_20180703_233844.jpg]] ![[IMG_20180708_172053.jpg]] ![[IMG_20180708_232139.jpg]] ![[IMG_20180708_232143.jpg]]