Canvas Trekking Backpack

Details

A trekking pack in 18 oz waxed cotton duck over a removable aluminium stay. Eighteen ounces per square yard is 610 grams per square metre, and both numbers are printed because the ounce figure alone is the easiest claim in this category to inflate. The stay is a single 6061 alloy bar you bend once, cold, to the curve of your own back. A moulded plastic framesheet fits an average spine and no particular one, and cannot be altered. This does the opposite, and it takes about five minutes and a table edge. The hip belt carries the load and it is bolted to the frame with four stainless screws rather than sewn into the bag. So it can be swapped for a different size, replaced when the foam packs down, or taken off for a light carry. The shoulder harness is the same. Load lifters run to a webbing ladder, so their attachment height adjusts to your torso instead of being fixed at the factory. On the cloth: waxed should mean impregnated, the wax driven into the weave so it can be melted back with a hair dryer for twenty years. What is often sold under the name is a polyurethane film on the face of plain duck, which beads water identically for a season and then cracks along the folds with nothing underneath to restore. An FTIR scraping settles it and we run one per roll.

• 18 oz cotton duck, 610 GSM base, about 700 GSM waxed, measured to IS 1964
• Wax impregnated through the weave, FTIR confirmed, not a surface film
• Removable 6061 aluminium stay, bent cold to your own spine
• Hip belt and shoulder harness both bolted on with four stainless screws each
• Torso-adjustable load lifters on a webbing ladder, about 70 percent of load to the hips
• 2.5 mm full-grain vegetable-tanned leather base and lash tabs, ISO 17131
• Chromic oxide nil by ISO 5398, chrome VI under 3 mg per kg by ISO 17075-1
• Roll-top main closure with side compression, YKK number 8 zips on the pockets
• Spare buckles, straps, belts and stays for five years
• No moulded plastic framesheet, no sewn-in hip belt, no PU-coated cloth called waxed
• Waxed canvas is heavy. A 40 L nylon pack weighs about 900 g and this one weighs 1.52 kg. You carry 600 extra grams for a cloth that any tailor can patch and that reproofs forever.
• It sheds rain and it is not waterproof. In a sustained downpour use a liner, because the seams are stitched, not taped.