Some good finds this week

[Lang]

Ed,

The first bag and the one in your photo bear no resemblance. The terrible standard of workmanship on the first (I will allow a bit of leeway as the canvas is twice as heavy and stiff) compared to the excellent finish on the second would make you think they come from two different worlds.

The first, as you say may be Australian, and in that case suffers from the limited cloth available from local manufacturers and looks like tarpaulin material. The Canadians either had a wider range of cloth or had access to American supplies. It certainly looks like the quality American fine canvas found in most of their equipment.

The main criticism was the workmanship and finish not the material.

Those lift the dot fasteners were (and still are) by far the most common metal design in use in Australia and dominated the field until the advent of modern nylon, velcro and plastic systems. They have about 5 times the holding power of common press-studs. There was not a "ute" in Australia without those holding the tarp on until the elastic loops took over in the late 70's.

Still strange to see on British pattern equipment which suffered from the very poorly chosen square buckle system which could not be tensioned satisfactorily and was very fiddly to adjust.