Rum Runner Seabag

Some time ago I was in need of a cool bag to take my computer and bits and pieces to work. I searched the internet for cool bags and found one called the Rum Runner Seabag: https://shipcanvas.com/products/rum-runner-seabag

It was a beauty and had the potential of making me look like a rugged sea man. Albeit I am not a bit fan of boats, I do look good in a fisherman's cap and beard. But the price tag was a bit beyond the £50 budget I'd set myself.

Now this was during 2020 just after the first Covid lockdown and we were starting to go back to work. My first priority was looking like a scraggly rugged sea man. Don't judge me. So after a week or so of looking at this bag and figuring out if I could find a way to buy it, I decided that the best way to get a bag like this was to make it myself.

Thus I began a two year odyssey to construct this bag from scratch. And a journey it was. I got my hands on a bunch of materials which were mainly heavy canvas and a nice leather and began solving the necessary problems needed to create this bag.

First off I needed more pockets than the no pockets in the original. I needed places to put phones, pens and small wires I needed with my laptop. So I built the entire bag with a double canvas wall then used the in-between space to create two open pockets and one zipped pocket for my bits and pieces. I even created a double skinned storm flap with a pocket on the underside for items that would be better to hide.

This is where the bag stayed in construction for a long time. I couldn't figure out how to create leather bottom of the bag. I had bought fairly stiff leather (I'm now thinking that this is generally softer leather) but I wet formed a circle with a lip that could be sewn into. But sewing the multiple layers of canvas through thick stiff leather was proving difficult and hard going, like I could manage five to ten stitches per hour and there are something like four or five hundred around the base.

Then to make things worse in the name of prettying up the bag I sewed a second line around the bottom with the canvas folded over the other side so I was now blindly sewing through four canvas layers and the leather blindly. My stitching went down to like five stitches an hour and even at this slow of a rate using pliers to pull through each stitch I managed to mess up the stitches. It doesn't look the worst, but it definitely was a labour of love.

I remember at the beginning of the project that I had thought that I could make these and sell them, even at two thirds the cost of the one I found online I could make a few bucks for side projects. After that stitching though it was very clear I will not be ever doing that again.

Once stitched I inserted grommets for the routing of the rope which can be configured in several different ways to carry the bag. There was a lot of banging to get that accomplished but in the end they all look fairly good.

All that was left was a the rope and fixtures. I had bought some copper pipe and was going to attempt to solder short lengths together to form cinches to close the bag and while I finally got that to work that was itself a great deal harder. I have soldered before, but the flux I got seemed to burn and not actually act like flux is supposed to and I ended up making more of a mess than a good job, but in the end it was all soldered together and sanded down to look passable.

Routing of the rope and a short splice of the rope together and the bag was complete. I'm happy it's done, its a project off my list of things to do, but it's been so long that I no longer need a bag. Oh well.