Flacket Experiment

I've been wanting to make a flacket for a long time now. Then, last week I was looking for items or largesse to include on my 50 States quest and I was trying to decide how to include a small container of honey. I initially thought of a pottery jar, but I don't have any of the tools or materials to make those yet (that's an after-I-buy-a-house project). The it occurred to me that I could make small flackets and fill those with honey.

I have the Creative Anachronist issue that includes directions for a flacket, but I like to look at multiple sources before undertaking a project I've never made before. As I was looking at one blog in particular, something about the shape of the flacket clicked in my mind and I realized I could modify its design a bit and make escallop-shaped flackets!

I went straight to the Pennsic Traceable Art project and browsed their selection of escallop designs. Option number three was the closest to the shape I wanted for the flacket. I used MS Paint to stretch the image vertically a bit. I printed it with two-inch margins to achieve the size I wanted for the flacket.

I traced the outline of the escallop onto ten-ounce, vegetable-tanned leather and then cut it out with an Xacto knife. Then I flipped the cutout over and traced it onto the side of leather and cut that piece out as well, creating two pieces that were mirror-images of each other and would therefore theoretically line up better when put together for sewing.

I decided to tool the details of the escallop into one side, which would be the front of the flacket when it was complete. The back I left plain. As I tooled, I began to worry about how the stitching would work. The flacket is relatively small, and I was supposed to get two rows of stitches around the curvy edges without messing up the tooling. Yikes! I was loathe to even try, and ruin the pretty tooled shell I had created.

Alas, nothing was ever accomplished by being timid. Holding my breath, I grabbed a seam marker. Just as I was about to begin marking, however, it dawned on me in the nick of time that it would be MUCH easier to mark the seams on the untooled back piece. Plus, if I messed it up, I wouldn't have to redo all that tooling.

As I traced the seam lines, I realized that I would have to cut off the pointy top of the shell if I wanted it to actually function as a bottle. So I grabbed the Xacto knife again and cut them off the front and back pieces.

It wasn't long into the drilling of the holes that I realized this was not a good plan. The seam lines didn't run neatly with the tooled lines, and drilling from back to front made it exceedingly difficult to keep a nice, neat line of stitches on the front of the project. I abandoned that tactic in favor of marking and drilling from the front, following the natural contour of the design rather than the marked seams on the back.

It also became readily apparent that there was no way to do a double seam and maintain and semblance of the tooled design at all. I resigned myself to a single seam, but I fretted about the problems that might arise when it came time to pour the sealant inside the flacket.

The opening at the top of the flacket will be small even with the modifications I will make to the seams on the next project, but on this one it's positively tiny. This made it very tedious to sand-pack the flacket. I persevered, though. When I could stuff no more sand inside, I wedged a highlighter in the opening to hold it open and round set it aside to dry.

Three days later, I poured the sand out of it. I was surprised by how easily the sand came out--guess I worried about that for naught. I stuck a thin pen inside the hole and scraped and banged it around inside as best I could to loosen any particles that were still clinging to the leather.

Next, it was time to apply the outside coating of wax. I warmed the oven and turned on the crock pot full of beeswax.  I put the flacket in the oven to warm the leather while I waited for the wax to melt. Then, using a pastry brush, I applied wax to the entire exterior of the flacket. After letting it cool back down to room temperature, I applied an additional thick coating of wax along the seams and edges to prevent the inner sealant from seeping out when it came time to pour.

I mixed up about a quarter cup of Envirotex Lite and carefully poured it into the flacket. I tilted and tipped it around for a good twenty minutes, trying to ensure that the inside was completely coated. The extra wax along the edges and seams did the trick--no seepage occurred! Then I up-ended the flacket over a piece of scrap cardboard and allowed most of the excess to drip out. When that was done, I set it aside for twenty four hours to dry.

When it had dried, I poured in the second coat of sealant, which was also allowed to dry for twenty four hours. Then a third coat was applied.When that coat had dried, I heated the oven to 200 degrees and placed the flacket inside to melt off the excess wax. When the wax was liquefied, I pulled the flacket out of the oven and used a paper towel to wipe the last stubborn bits of wax from its surface.

After allowing it to cool back to room temperature, I filled the flacket with water and set it aside for several minutes. I then inspected it for any sign of water seepage. Finding none, I poured the water out (as a point of interest, it holds 1/3c). It was done!

Cutting out the swoopy scallop edges was a task that quickly tested my patience. I initially thought that I would not do it on future projects. Rather, I would do a traditionally-shaped flacket and tool the escallop into the front. However, I think the frustration is worth it in the end--it's a really cute little bottle. And it'll be even better when I get those seams right! I'm also going to look for a more symmetrical escallop pattern. This one is actually pretty lopsided.