This past week I finished my updates to the backpack. I cleaned up the leather straps, replaced the corroded fittings, cut the straps to length, punched new holes, and attached the straps to the frame. Here are the results.

The replacement buckles look better than the originally planned buckles! I doubt you’d notice, but I had to remove and adjust that felt padding on the lower frame by narrowing the area covered by it. Otherwise the leather straps would have to wrap around the padding, which doesn’t provide as secure of a hold.

From this top view you can see the leather badges on the bag that I keep on top of the overall pack. I found the bag and those badges at DragonCon a few years back. The in-character explanation is that I’d carry the whole thing as I walked from town to town, and set it down in my room at an inn, taking my lighter bag around shopping in town.

At some point I still need to go through what I carry in and on the pack for events. Right now I’ve got it in a kind of “all-purpose” configuration, with a bota bag for water, a small bag for local shopping, and a wool blanket for warmth/shelter. I’d like to figure out 1) what I would want to carry if I decided to take this camping and 2) what I would want to carry if I were actually the character that this was designed for. What tools would I carry for my trade? What in-period essentials would I carry for survival? Would I have anything in there to deal with bandits or wild animals?

As someone pointed out to me recently, I apparently like to have a story behind the things I create.