This was a gift from @Switchblade (Thank You Sir!) It is a Hungarian Defence Force (Magyar Honvédség) ration bag. Made from tightly woven cotton. shown here with the Expat/Esee Cleaver and everyone favorite military flashlight, for scale purposes metal buckle on one side, 1" flat cotton webbing for a should strap, and two long 1" flat cotton webbing tie offs for the waist, or for lashing to another pack. inside the bottom is divided off 60/40 split . This extends up about 5". This bag could be used to gather food, or fire tinder or berries or used as a quick day hike bag with a water bottle and snacks. I chose to load it out as truck meal kit bag, for the 4x4. All this kit fits in this bag NOS Russian Mess Kit, bag of waxed cotton dental rolls and matches and lighter, Ti Spork, Mora, tin of smoked sardines, tin of sardines in tomato sauce, brick of cane sugar, square tin of tea, spices, oatmeal packs. There is room in the mess kit for more food. starting on the bottom , the square tin, and sardine tins, sugar, and fire kit goes in followed by the spork, mess kit and then the knife. all ready to go. nice lightweight bag, very multi-purpose. I plan to waterproof it with a wax based coating. I would like to thank Switchblade for this bag.
That's actually a great idea to have a separate bag for food. I always try to stuff my food into a dry bag and then into a pack but it makes it a pain to get in and out of. On top of that it typically adds a bit of weight to a pack that could carry nicer separately
https://www.otterwax.com/collections/waxes/products/fabric-dressing Try this stuff I wasted backpacks with this years ago still fantastic shape I prefer this over the Greenland wax as the paraffin tends to be more brittle when it's cold and You don't get that awesome honey smell
I don't want to derail this thread but I got a similar sized canvas swiss bread bag recently. I was planning to use Snoseal on it. Anyone used that before? Ive read favorable results on a couple other sites. Great bag by the way! Hope to see an update if you treat it.
derail away! ALL GOOD! I have used sno-seal before, simply because it was DIRT CHEAP to waterproof anything with. However....if you don't use a hair dryer to melt and a cloth to rub the sno seal in , you can get a lot of dirt and stuff built on the surface. Its "not" as waterproof as trad waxes, but not a chump either. try on a test fabric first and do the shower test.
I was planning on melting it in a double boiler and then brushing it on/in. Planned on probably doing two coats.
I have the Polish version http://www.budk.com/Surplus-Authentic-Polish-Olive-Drab-Bread-Bag--Like-New-37800 It looks like yours has a better carrying system, but mine has internal mag/ knife pouches.
I went ahead and Snosealed this Swiss bread bag today. It can attach to the top of my Swiss Engineers rucksack and it seemed silly that all the rest of the canvas had been rubberized and waterproofed but the main bag portion. I put two coats on and the water just beads right off it now. Will have to get it out in the rain to be sure but I'm happy with how it turned out.
No it seems to have absorbed pretty well. It gets warm here in the summer so I try to be careful not to overapply this kind of product for fear of it bleeding off onto my clothes when it's hot out. I've made that mistake with leather before and learned from it