...One man's ditty bag. Brandon came over today to "play boats" with Doryman and he brought his ditty bag along to show to me. He made his bag many years ago from a series of articles in WoodenBoat magazine. From the look of the articles, they were the precursors to Emiliano's book.
This bag is large! Too large, really. It holds everything Brandon needs and much, much more. He has plans to make a much smaller bag in the near future. The tools he uses most often are stashed in a pocket sewn to the inside of the giant bag, which you can sorta see in the bulge below -
So, what does he carry around? Lets take a look at what's inside -
Three (!!!) bench hooks with nicely finished, spliced and whipped ends (very pretty!) an old wood spool of medium-heavy thread, a bundle of thicker twine, a small spool of unwaxed plied thread, ebony and oak fids (and one monster fid that was as tall as the bag, not shown in this picture) good scissors, sail knife, a cake of beeswax, ebony seam rubber, fancy whipping covered bamboo needle holder, and a sailmaker's palm.
He also had some nice blocks that he made for his Valgerda Ravn -
Along with the sail which has some nice hand worked grommets -
And becket -
A very nice kit! Thanks for sharing, Brandon!
He also had some nice blocks that he made for his Valgerda Ravn -
Mary, Thanks for the lovely post and pictures.
Making the ditty bag was a great project and I learned a lot. People need to be warned that this bag is really the wrong size. It's way to big. You've got to dump everything out in order to find anything. Most ditty bags are about half that size, which is much more practical.
I had fun yesterday. Thanks to you and Doryman for putting up with me for all those hours.
It was a joy to have you over, as always, Brandon!
You make a good point about the ditty bag being too large - I'll go into more detail about ditty bag size (as recommended by Emiliano) in a future post and link to some historical data collected from museums.
I don't understand why he advocates such a large bag unless it's for ease of sewing? Smaller thread and stitches would look prettier on a smaller bag and his stitch lengths, etc. would not work out as well. A point to ponder...