Waxed Canvas Came Off the Sails

Waxed Canvas Came Off the Sails

Six hundred years of sailors solving the same problem, and a cloth that keeps a record of where you took it.

Wet sails pull better

Sailors working between Scotland and the Baltic noticed something in the 1400s. A wet sail held the wind better than a dry one. The trouble was the weight. A soaked sail slowed the boat down.

So they rubbed fish oils and grease into the cloth. The sail behaved like a wet sail without carrying the water. And when a sail wore out, they cut the good pieces into capes and wore them on deck. That is where the whole idea of a weatherproof coat comes from.

Arbroath, 1795

A sailmaker in Arbroath, on the east coast of Scotland, perfected treating flax sails with linseed oil, which was a by-product of the same flax. It lasted far longer than fish oil. The Royal Navy used it. The early tea clippers used it. It had two habits, though. It stiffened in the cold and it went yellow with time, which is exactly how the yellow fisherman's slicker got its color.

The tea race changes the cloth

As the clippers got faster their sails got bigger, and flax was too heavy to carry. Those same ships were hauling cotton out of Egypt, so they tried it. Spun as a two-ply yarn in both directions it was lighter and stronger, and it took the oil better than flax ever had. Egyptian cotton sailcloth with linseed oil starts showing up in the mid 1850s.

That is the moment waxed canvas becomes a cloth for clothes and not only for sails.

Paraffin, the 1930s

In the 1930s the oil was replaced with paraffin wax. It did not yellow, it did not crack in cold, and it breathed. That is essentially the cloth we use today, and it has been around long enough to prove itself in the worst weather people can find.

What it does with a life

Wax canvas keeps a record. Where the jacket folds, the wax moves and lightens. Where you put your hands, it darkens. A scuff stays. Run a warm hand across a crease and it settles back down.

After a season your jacket does not look like anyone else's, and it looks better than it did when it was new. There are not many materials on earth that do that.

Ours

Our wax canvas Ultimate Jackets are quilted by hand. That is a slow way to do it and it makes a jacket with body and shape that a machine grid will not give you. They come in Golden Brown, Black, Hunter Green and Ivory. There is a vest, and there is a wax canvas hat that gets better looking faster than anything I own.

A Way Of Life.

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Hunter Green Wax Canvas Ultimate Jacket, quilted by hand

Black Wax Canvas Ultimate Jacket, quilted by hand

Ivory Wax Canvas Ultimate Jacket, quilted by hand

Wax Canvas Black Bear Brand NW Original Logo Hat

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