Adventurer Canvas Bedroll | Fantasy Medieval Camping and Larp

the biggest thing that i would like to impart to you with this video uh what i learned is that diy projects are not always cheaper than just buying something that's ready made for you [Music] greetings adventurers my name is kramer and i have just today completed a more period style bed roll so hopefully i won't have to be using sleeping bags at night even in colder temperatures here i'm going to be supplementing with the wool blanket cloak that i have but this is a pretty simple construction it's a canvas drop cloth on the outside that i attempted to waterproof get into all the steps in a second and just on the inside there is a 66 inch by 96 inch 100 wool blanket on the inside that i got from the townsends reenacting company not affiliated but there is a link in the description they are a little pricey it's 100 wool blanket and it's huge the reason why you want a larger blanket is so that you can get as many layers both above you and below you as possible while you're sleeping um and then i have the canvas over that to help keep everything clean because i like the blanket and i don't want it to get ruined the whole bed roll weighs approximately five and a half pounds and had i used a more traditional waterproofing method like boiled linseed oil or beeswax or i had gone with a full silicone bath it likely would have weighed upwards of seven to eight pounds maybe even more so i didn't work from any particular template with this i pretty much made it up as i went along and my inspiration from this comes from a couple things that i've seen on pinterest as well as this video by the townsend's youtube channel if you haven't heard of them for some reason highly recommend so that is what i encourage you to do is just to work with what you have so pretty much any wool blanket will do you'll definitely want to be using wool for this it's a lot warmer than the other options it has better performance in wet conditions too so the canvas that i'm using is a canvas drop cloth that i bought from my local hardware store and i don't know that i would choose to do that again compared to other canvas items that i have this material is very loosely woven it's it's not the greatest there are loose threads here and there um it's just not meant to be used for something like this it's just that they come in large bulk they're relatively cheap comparatively but it was still like 20 or 30 dollars i got a six by nine foot uh piece and i ended up only using half of it for this project plus a little bit up at the top just to make sure that the bag could go over my head but compared to the canvas knapsack that i was sent a couple of months ago the canvas on that is just far superior and even duck cloth i bought a bit of duck cloth at um which is a type of canvas weave i believe i bought a bit of duck cloth at my local joanne fabrics it's a bit on the pricier side especially for a larger piece like this but just the weave would have been so much better so much easier to waterproof and so this whole project um in itself is very simple so i don't do any modifications to the blanket i'm not really giving you measurements because my this was made specifically for my body size i measured myself um i'm five foot seven so it needed to be longer than five foot seven i measured all the way around my shoulders i multiplied that number by two because the whole thing has to fold over on top of me and then added six to eight inches to the entire width so that i can move around in it comfortably and then i folded it into thirds and then sewn at the bottom and then about four inches up the feet just to keep me from kicking out of it there's a one inch overlap here at the center but your measurements are going to be different than mine so you're going to need to do those yourself i'm experimenting with ways that i'm folding the wool blanket inside i want to get as many layers both beneath and on top of me as possible the one thing that i'm certain i will be doing is rolling the last two or three inches up in the bottom so that my feet don't roll out of it because keeping your feet warm during the night is very important so it'll be like a little envelope for me there at the bottom uh and then i added ties to it so that i don't kick out of it i'm anticipating that those ties are going to be a lot easier to contend with than zippers i hate zippers on sleeping bags so looking forward to see how that performs so the ties i put on this are replaceable and that is because modularity is always something that is key for me i put two of them uh 40 inches in total up from the bottom and then spaced 20 inches apart each and it is actually two layers of leather for each tie so there were eight one inch squares that i cut out and then i sewed uh one on each side of the canvas so the canvas is actually sandwiched in between those two pieces so that when the ties get pulled tight i'm pulling on the leather stitching not the actual canvas again because the canvas material is rather weak on this um and that was something that i learned from the knapsack that jennifer sent me so once again thank you jennifer the ties were just ropes that i happen to have lying around in the garage there are a bit of timeline i cinch the ends so that they don't come apart and then i used a leather stitching needle with a thread that had a knot tied in it so that it wouldn't pull through the rope i threaded the needle through the rope and then used that needle to thread all the way through the leather sandwich and then tied a knot at the end so that it wouldn't pull all the way through and that means that if i need to replace the canvas eventually i can take those ties and those leather pieces off very easily and just move them to the new one if one of them breaks or something i can replace it easily so nothing sewed directly to the canvas the absolute longest part of this process was attempting to waterproof the canvas and the reason why i wanted to do that is simply because the way i'm sitting on it right now when i'm sitting down on it or when i'm lying on it to sleep it's going to be in contact with the moisture in the ground and that is going to potentially be an issue eventually using wool as your blanket is going to help mitigate that to agree having some wool sleeping wear will help mitigate that to some degree so you should be fine it's not like you're going to be sleeping out in the open in the rain with this and it's going to keep you dry it's not the purpose um you wouldn't pick a campsite like that if you're sleeping in a puddle you've done something wrong the waterproofing technique that i originally tried to use was very expensive um so originally what i wanted to do with this drop cloth is that i wanted to soak it in a solution of one to five 100 silicone um to mineral spirits and that worked out horribly for me i wasted an entire day trying to do that i think the mineral spirits that i bought um were like the green eco-friendly kind which means that it's like 65 water and the silicone just did not dissolve i ended up with this big glob in the center that i had to end up throwing away because it wasn't going anywhere after like an hour of stirring which just wasn't right the other thing with using a silicone solution to paint over it is i don't know how well that breathes and it's fine for a tent or for a covering but when you're sleeping in it you need to be able to moderate your body temperature and it could get dangerous very quickly if your sleeping bag doesn't breathe so as i'm thinking about it it might be a good idea that i didn't try to make my own silicone solution i could have gone with the boiled linseed oil option it would have been the more historically accurate option but i don't want to mess around with how flammable that's supposed to be i've heard mixed things some people have said that it's nothing to worry about other people have said that it's definitely something to consider um that plus the drying time those are the reasons why i wanted to go with silicone instead the silicone didn't work and then with the silicone solution i realized that i was essentially trying to make something that already exists for much cheaper in the form of the camp silicone aerosol sprays and now i know those aren't supposed to last as long but they're a lot cheaper and they're a lot easier to work with than trying to make something from scratch so that is what i used on this with the intention of over the next couple of months sharing with you whether that is effective or not as a waterproofing method for this project so i used the kiwi waterproofing sprays as far as i'm aware there are three different levels the blue can is a water protector which appears to be the weakest one then there's the green camp spray which is water repellent and then there's the red can which is water proof so that is what i used on this because i wanted it to be as resistant as possible so the biggest problem with the spray that i think i'm going to encounter is actually not the spray itself but rather that the canvas material is rather porous again because the weave is very loose because it's just a drop cloth i think i'm going to experience a level of of misting with that i don't think that's a problem with the spray because i've used it on my shoes to absolutely great effect but it's just a much tighter material and so i think the lesson to really be learned from this project is not necessarily how to make this specifically because it's rather simple but rather that diy solutions are not always cheaper or more timer cost effective than just buying something that's already been made so the blanket was 220 that's really expensive i got a coupon but it that's an expensive blanket the canvas drop cloth was somewhere in the 20 to 30 range and then the original waterproofing materials i bought were in the 70 range i got two cans of the mineral spirits one of which i'm going to return and to uh tubes of silicone 100 silicone caulk and that that adds up i'm sitting on like 300 worth of materials at that price point it would have been much cheaper to just buy a waxed canvas tarp and modify it rather than trying to make my own from scratch it would have been less time consuming to do it that way as well so what i think i learned is and what i hope that you will take from this as well is that when you're buying that many materials it's only cost effective if you're making a bunch of items it only would have been worth it if i was going to use all of that silicone and mineral spirits to waterproof a ton of items but for one project it's super expensive to try to do that you know if you're bushcrafting if you're doing a whole bunch of tarps or if i wanted to do all of my bags or my hoods or something like that too maybe it would have been worth it but the silicone sprays just so much cheaper they're like you know ten dollars a bottle and they last for a good while the question is does it work on this and we'll have to wait until i've had it for a little bit longer to find out i mean if it works then it works and it still looks the same um so if that's enough for you then i think you should go for that i mean what i've experienced is that the waterproofing methods that i've seen on some bushcraft channels are just not as easy as they make it look and finding that out the hard way is pretty expensive um so just want to caution you there but i don't want to make it i don't want to make any promises but kit from skill tree maybe doing some more historical type waterproofing or waterproofing with the silicone solution if you're interested go ahead and check out his channel again i'm not promising he's going to do that but i have it on good authority that something like that might be coming down the pipe so keep an eye out for that so with that i will be adding this happily to my camp kit hopefully it lasts me a good long time if you'd like to see a little bit what my camping setup looks like at the moment with this as an addition now you can go ahead and check out this video medieval camp aesthetic and in the meantime i'd like to wish you good luck on your adventures

Channel: Living Anachronism

Views: 30,902

Keywords: medieval, fantasy medieval, fantasy, fantasy adventure, medieval fantasy, lord of the rings, lotr, the witcher, witcher, tolkien, reenactment, fantasy reenactment, larp, how to, camping, bedroll, medieval camping, sleep system, bushcraft, bushcraft bedroll

Id: om4qbKNW2j8

Length: 11min 27sec (687 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 30 2022