You know those cool old waxed canvas bags which used to keep things dry before miners discovered nylon in a cave in Papua New Guinea1? Now you can make your own! Well, technically you could always make your own. But now Photojojo has provided a guide for you. Spoiler: it’s dead easy.
You will need a canvas bag, a couple bars of paraffin wax, a brush, a double-boiler and – finally – a way to distract the attendant at the local laundromat when you toss the almost-completed bag into their drier to finish it (unless you want to ruin your own drier).
Follow the tutorial for full step-by-step instructions, but the basics are that you melt the wax and liberally brush it all over the outside of the bag, wait for it to cool, then put it inside another bag (for protection) while it goes for a spin in the dryer to melt the wax deep into the bag’s fibers.
And that’s it. Our esteemed and be-mustached deputy editor John Brownlee will no doubt already be scouring the flea markets in chilly Boston to find a donor bag, such is his obsession with anything as olde-worlde as this (fun fact: John sleeps in a bed fashioned from the bones of Jules Verne’s brother, Captain Nemo, and he also owns the first piece of plywood ever made).
Oh, and you need a tip for distracting the laundromat attendant? Tell them that the pale, creepy-looking guy using the washer is dying all his clothes black in there. Works every time.
Source: Photojojo
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It’s little know fact that nylon was actually named for the New Guinean pidgin word for “sexy legs.”↩
