Waxed Canvas Daypack

Details

A plain top-loading daypack in 14 oz waxed cotton duck. Fourteen ounces is the weight of a square yard of the cloth, which is 475 grams per square metre, and it is the point where canvas stops being shirt weight and starts holding its own shape. The cheat sitting behind the words waxed canvas is a surface coating. Polyurethane or acrylic sprayed onto plain duck beads water for a season exactly the way wax does, and it is cheaper by a wide margin. Then it cracks along every fold line, peels in flakes, and cannot be reproofed, because a coating is a skin and there is nothing in the weave to melt back. Real waxed cloth is impregnated: the paraffin and beeswax are driven into the cotton, so a hair dryer and a wax bar restore it for the life of the bag. An FTIR scraping separates the two, and we run one on every roll. The second cheat is quieter. Ounce figures are quoted for the greige cloth before waxing, or dropped altogether behind the phrase heavy duty canvas. Base cloth here is 475 GSM and the finished waxed cloth measures about 560 GSM, and both are printed so they can be checked against the 14 oz claim. The base corners and strap anchors are 2 mm full-grain leather, riveted and bar-tacked, because a bag fails at its corners and its anchors long before the cloth wears out.

• 14 oz cotton duck, 475 GSM base, about 560 GSM waxed, measured to IS 1964
• Paraffin and beeswax impregnated, confirmed by FTIR, never a PU or acrylic film
• Paraffin fraction checked by MOSH-MOAH, because the wax touches your clothes daily
• 2 mm full-grain vegetable-tanned leather corners and anchors, ISO 17131
• Chromic oxide nil by ISO 5398, chrome VI below 3 mg per kg by ISO 17075-1
• YKK number 8 coil zips, copper rivets and bar tacks at all eight load points
• Seam strength to ISO 13935-2, tear to ISO 13937-2, spray rating 4 to 5 on ISO 4920
• Reproofing wax bar and a spare zip slider in the box
• No PU-coated cloth called waxed, no plated hardware, no printed leather trim
• It creases where you fold it and lightens along the creases within weeks. Rub the crease with your palm and the wax moves back. It never looks new again and it is not meant to.